I love these technicians you have seen. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. A very warm welcome to our Capital Markets Day 2024 on behalf of the management board and the supervisory board. It's a pleasure to be with you today. My name is Thomas Kremer. I'm the Vice Chairman of the supervisory board. This event is a milestone for us, a key moment to connect with you, the financial community, and an opportunity to provide visibility and clarity about our strategic direction and operational performance. The management will deliver to you all the details.
Please allow me to have a brief look at our governance structure. The dual governance structure of Solutions 30, with a management board and a supervisory board, is not very common in France, not in Europe, and not around the world. Therefore, I want to take the opportunity to briefly explain the structure.
The management board is entrusted with the company's operations and to develop the strategy. The members of our management board are Gianbeppi Fortis, our CEO. It's Amaury Boilot, our Secretary General. There he is. It's Luc Brasseur, our Chief Revenue Officer. And Wojciech Pomykała, our COO. They are all with us today and will explain to you the way forward of Solutions 30. The supervisory board is a separate body with a general oversight function over the most important strategic matters affecting the company and over its governance, and this board is also responsible for selecting and appointing the management, the members of the management board. The supervisory board of Solutions 30 has seven members and is represented today by me and by Pascal Mourgue, who just joined us. Good morning, Pascal.
Good morning.
In my view, this board has the key qualifications which are needed to exercise an efficient oversight in the interest of the shareholders, meaning independence, diversity, competence, and knowledge of the business. Solutions 30 benefits from a supervisory board that is 100% independent. The members have no conflict of interest and can exercise their oversight in the best interest of the company. The board has a strong diversity profile, as three of our seven members are women. Our members have an international profile, coming from three different countries, covering the footprint of Solutions 30. And competence. In 2022, we reorganized our committees, expanding the audit and strategy committee to cover risk management, compliance, and ESG. In connection with this new organization, the supervisory board has welcomed three new members, including myself, having joined 2022.
We have the right mix of expertise: strategy, finance, audit, ESG, and sector knowledge. In addition, the principals knowing the business is key for us. To give you an example, last year we had a supervisory board meeting in Belgium over two days. It was hosted by our Belgian company, and one purpose was for the board members to learn more about the frontline. Each of us accompanied one technician at his work for a whole morning, which was a fantastic opportunity to gain first-hand insights about our technicians' daily work.
Overall, the supervisory board is well-placed and ready to support Solutions 30 in its next phase of growth, and the supervisory board fully supports the group's strategy. Ladies and gentlemen, a word on our share price is necessary. No one, no one can be satisfied with the current share price. We have to restore value for our shareholders.
To achieve this goal, the company is focusing on four pillars: performance, constantly deliver on our roadmap based on optimal capital allocation and financial discipline, colleagues, all based on a transparent reporting and on accountability. The strategy of the company is clear, the market positioning is strong, and the high quality of our operation is proven. That's now the moment for me to hand over to our CEO, Gianbeppi Fortis, to explain to you all the relevant details. Gianbeppi.
Thank you, Thomas. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for being with us today, physically and also from remote. There are people that are connected from remote. Some housekeeping first. After my introduction, we are going to go through the markets in which we operate with Luc. There is going to be a session on margins with Wojtek, and then you will hear our Human Resources Manager, Denis. HR for the group, he's been appointed HR for the group at the beginning of the year, because with the size we have, we now have synergies that we can exploit across countries and bring the best practices across the group.
Then we have a session on the geographies with Amaury, Wojtek, Ton, who represents Benelux, and Wojtek again going through the different geographies. Then the session on finance and M&A with Jonathan and Amaury. Finally, we will conclude with the ESG part with Katarzyna and Nathalie. There will be two Q&A sessions, one at around eleven o'clock and another one in the end, and people who connect from remote can send emails. The questions will be read here, and we will give the answers. Let me go to the start of the presentation. Most of the ones that are assisting today know us, but let me just recap who we are. We are a service company, so we provide technical services to large account that delegate to us the provision of such services to their clients.
It's very critical for them. For several brands, it's the only moment where there is a physical contact between their clients and their brand, so we represent them. It's very important, and it's important to be entrusted by large brands in the space in which we operate. Our core competencies is to operate a large network of technicians across Europe. We are in a market that is very fragmented. There is lots of small companies, still lots of moms and pops that operate in our, in our sector. We are one of the largest. Being largest, we have a certain density in certain geographies that are important in Europe, and therefore, we are more flexible than competition, and we also have a better cost structure. Today, we have a network of sixteen thousand people across Europe. We cover nine countries.
We manage about 80,000 interventions per day, made a bit more than EUR 1 billion in 2023, with 7% EBITDA margin growing. I think that's the most important message that we want to deliver today, big focus on margins, this year and also the coming years. This is snapshot of the geographical coverage, where you see that there is two large geographies today, Benelux and France. But we will talk about Germany because we believe Germany will be as large as Benelux and France quite quickly. And then we have three verticals. Telecom is the historical one, so three-quarters of our revenues are still made in telecom, but energy, that is today 14%, is growing faster, and we believe that in the midterm, energy will be as large as telecom. We will see it later. We have some logos below.
It's not, it's not exhaustive, but it's just to give you some examples of the companies we work with. So basically, it's the largest telecom operators in Europe, largest utilities, largest manufacturers of electronics, and very prestigious companies. And this is the recipe that we deploy with them. It's three main things. So I said before that we are in a fragmented market, and to be strong, you need volume. So what we do when we are in a geography, we focus on the largest accounts, the ones that can feed us with volumes. We try to lock them in. Our service is sticky, so it takes time to build processes together with our clients, and once they are in place, they are there to stay in the long run.
That's the first step of our strategy: develop a strong relationship with important accounts in the geographies in which we are. The second step then is to handle these volumes. Handling these volumes, you build economies of scale. You know, you have a large back office that is efficient. You work on standardizing interventions. You learn a lot because you have lots of volumes, and little by little, you become better than competition. The third step, once you have these volumes, is that then you are very dense in an area, and when you are dense in an area, you are more flexible because you have more people than competition, so you can juggle with people. And also, you have a best cost structure because your technicians drive less, so they don't waste time as smaller companies that to send people right and left.
Across with these three ingredients that we use, there is an IT platform, our IT platform, that is extremely important because, as you can imagine, you know, 80,000 interventions per day, if it not automatic or most of it automatic, it's just unmanageable. We keep investing in this platform because we try to squeeze out, you know, every day, I would say, some bits of automation. Our objective is really to become every day more and more automatized and efficient. The recipe has been applied as of today to three main sectors that we have seen. You see, you know, these waves of technology that are coming. You know, the first one for us was telecom with DSL. We are continuing with fiber.
IT came in quite early in two thousand and nine, two thousand and ten. And the last one is energy. That is really picking up. But there will be other ways. Our recipe can be applied to any market, I would say, where there is large volumes of interventions and some digital equipment that need to be installed and people who need assistance. So the recipe can be multiplied many times. Luc will talk about some of the new markets that we are addressing. A few examples of how we have applied this recipe successfully. One is Benelux. We had nothing in Benelux up until two thousand and fifteen, you know, EUR 40 million revenues. We had nothing, very small presence. We did some small acquisitions.
Overall, up until now, we have acquired about EUR 40 million revenues with four small acquisitions, and then most of the work has been organic. And as you can see, in less than 10 years, we have multiplied our revenues by 30, and we have become one of the strongest player in in this geography. We opened a joint venture with Telenet, that is the second largest operator of the country. We have been very instrumental for the country in the deployment of fiber, having taken the fiber in hundreds of thousands of houses, and it's continuing because it's a geography where there is a big potential. Energy. Now, not geographical approach, sectorial approach. We began energy in 2015, EUR 4 million revenues, so nothing.
As you can see, like in Belgium, we multiplied these volumes by 30 in less than 10 years. Some acquisitions and a lot of organic growth. You know, we deployed one third of the smart meters that France deployed. We have become an important player in the solar world. This that is becoming important for all of Europe. We are installing the largest solar floating farm in the east of France, and we are working now with important utilities across Europe for the upgrade of the grid. It's an important thing that all of the European countries have to do, improve the quality of the distribution network of electricity. Germany is the last one where we are applying this recipe. Luc will talk more about that. Very important, Germany is doing two things today.
They've been late in investing, but now they are investing. Fiber plan is launched, bigger than the French one, like two times bigger than the French one. Germany is investing about EUR 50 billion in the fiber deployment, and they are also very aggressive in terms of renewable energy. As you know, they don't have nuclear. They have to get out of coal and fossil, so they are investing in renewable energy and in particular in solar. Big potential for us, both in telecom and in energy. Very short-term focus is telecom, because we signed contract with all of the operators in Germany, and we are doing the ramp-up. We are seeing double-digit growth today, and we believe that there will be double-digit growth for many years.
What the clients are telling us is that the deployment and the connection of clients to fiber in Germany will take longer than in France, at least, you know, a decade, we believe more. So we are talking about a wave that is going to to last 10, 20 years with good prices. We are seeing prices better than in other countries, and therefore, while Germany is growing, and still doesn't have really the critical mass, we are seeing very good margins, margins that are better than in other places. So Germany certainly an important pillar for us in the short term. Now, on the left side, you see, you know, the summary of what we are today.
A company that is making EUR 1 billion revenues, quite well diversified, both in terms of geographies and in terms of activities. A good experience of M&A. We managed to do 30 acquisitions and, more importantly, integrations successfully. Two-thirds of our revenues today come outside of France. That was the country where we started, and we have been capable to riding these technological waves in the past, and we will do so again in the future. On the right side is what we are doing now. So after a few years of very strong growth, it is time now to clean up a little bit our contract base.
We are, you know, we are being very selective, I would say, in the past, the past few months, and we will continue to be selective in the coming months because our focus now is margins and cash generation. That is very clear. And then in terms of places where we focus for the growth, as I said before, Germany, it will be the third pillar of the group soon, and energy, that will grow faster than all the rest. And of course, we will do this keeping in mind compliance, sustainability, as you will see in the rest of the presentation. The proof that what we are doing is really done, that what I'm saying is really done, is the outcome of the first half of this year.
You have seen that we have reduced revenues in several places because we've been selective, but at the same time, in the important places, Germany, energy, good growth, you know, 25%-30% growth. The work on the margins now is visible. We gained 200 basis points in the first half of this year, and also the focus on cash generation. We have improved our free cash flow by EUR 26 million, and we'll continue to do so in the coming future. This is the roadmap, just a snapshot. You will get more details, don't worry. One priority, short term. By the way, we are saying EUR 26 billion-... because we want to give you some guidance, quite short term, on what we consider important and we believe we are capable to deliver.
This is why we are talking 2026. Benelux, we are one of the strongest players of the geography. We are there to stay, one of the strongest. We are not going to have an easy H2 this year. You will see later with the guys from Benelux why. We told you already, but you are going to get more details. In any case, we see a good trajectory of growth for quite a while with double-digit margins. France, the game there is to rebalance the mix. It was mostly telecom, and now it's becoming balanced between telecom and energy, with energy, you know, bound to increase size significantly by 2026.
Germany, third thing, so third pillar of the group, and should be best performer, you know, best geography for us, by 2026. And then for the rest of Europe, you know, the smaller countries, we will be extremely pragmatic. Either we see that there is the potential to grow and be profitable, I mean, bottom line profitable, or we will consider getting out of some geographies. We'll not stay there if we see there is no potential, we are not capable to make them profitable. Oh, and of course, we will do that keeping a good balance sheet as we have today, with a limited leverage and without any dilution for our shareholders. Let me pass the ball to Luc. Thank you.
Thank you, Gianbeppi. Good morning, everybody. My name is Luc Brasseur. Cannot hide that I'm Belgian with a name like Brasseur. And I wanna talk to you today about what we call market programs. Markets is two things: it's vertical markets, energy, connectivity, but it's also geographical markets, countries. And programs is what we do in those markets, right? For example, mobile installation of antennas or IT support for HP. That's a program, right? So I wanna talk to you about those things and how market programs make the company evolve and make the company grow. On the slide, you can see on the left side, the slide that already was shown by Gianbeppi, and you see that when we started, we invested in technology support, technology services.
We bolted on in-home support for telcos, and that generated the next growth wave, right? A new program for telcos. At the same time, we entered new geographies, a new area, a new market, so that generates growth. Recently, we've looked at the energy market, and you see that the energy market is now, and the programs in that market, are now causing the next wave of growth. To show you what energy does for the group, today, energy is about 11% of our revenue, or in 2023 it was 11% of our revenue. But if I look at the funnel today, then the funnel is about 31% of energy market programs, right? So the energy is really picking up in our business. Why? You know, why do we look at those markets?
Connectivity is a hundred and fifty billion addressable market for us, right? So the numbers you see on the left side are addressable market numbers for us. So the market is much bigger, but we don't produce transformers for the energy sector or nuclear plants or... Right? So we don't do that. So the numbers you see there on the left side is the addressable market for us. In connectivity, you're talking about a hundred and fifty billion of addressable market. The biggest countries there for us are Germany, where only 40% of the homes passed are deployed, and about 10% of homes are connected to the fiber, so that's a huge market. But also Belgium, 28% of the homes passed deployed, 7% home connect. The U.K. is still a big market, forty-seven HP, about 12% HC.
There is lots of markets where the Home Connect is not as widely deployed as in France, for example. So interesting market still for us to be. The energy segment is much bigger. The EU sees EUR 2,500 billion as investment that goes into that market because of decarbonization, net zero by 2050, you know, programs that EU is pushing into the countries. Our addressable part, around EUR 800 billion, and I will talk about these markets more in depth. Technology, IT is a big market, but there are other markets in the technology space that are very interesting for the group. Just to talk a bit about the programs in those segments. Fiber construction in the connectivity space, customer connections.
We still do a lot of legacy fix, and certainly when I'll talk about Germany, you'll see that legacy fix, copper and coax is still very important for the group. It's not gone. Copper is still there for the next 10, 15 years in many countries. And mobile. We've got mobile presence now in U.K., Spain, Poland, and Italy, and we'll continue to invest in that mobile space. In the energy sector, there are four main segments that we're looking at. The power grid, and you'll hear about some recent projects that we've won in the Benelux on power grid upgrades and expansions. Very important, it's not only the grid, but it's also the connections to the grid. Photovoltaic, solar, and BES, BESS, so BESS, battery, storage.
EVC, there will be a time that electric cars will be used by more than just the Belgians, the Norwegians, and the Dutch. I'm an early adopter. I drive Tesla since 2014, 2015. You know, I'm sure it will come. Smart meters. France is deployed, but in Germany, only 20% of the houses have smart meters. In the U.K., 40%. There is still a lot to do in the smart meter market. The technology space, traditionally, we've looked at IT and retail, but there are more things. You know, we're looking with a lot of intensity to the rail market. We've got a Solutions 30 Rail company now, with a couple of specialists that are looking at the rail segment.
There's lots of signaling, lots of communication, lots of train stations that need support, so it's a very big sector in Europe, and I'll show you in a minute. IoT is a market that we're looking at, and we're also looking at elevators. So just to give you an idea of, you know, some of the customers we operate for in those markets. Connectivity: Deutsche Telekom is investing EUR 6 billion a year in their networks. Virgin Media in the U.K., we're deploying fiber for Virgin Media, GBP 4.5 billion a year. Not going through each bullet, but just to give you an idea. Enedis is an important customer for Solutions 30, EUR 4 billion a year. Fluvius, we've won some of those projects that make up that EUR 1 billion a year.
So, you know, large investments in that energy space. Why is rail important for us? If you look at rail, in Italy, EUR 16 billion a year in rail. In France, EUR 10 billion a year in rail. Deutsche Bahn needs to do a real upgrade of their network and signaling and, you know, so EUR 8 billion a year. So it's a huge market where there are opportunities for Solutions 30. Just a quick deep dive on the energy programs and how we see that evolve. We started in two thousand and fifteen with smart meters. Linky in France was the first big contract in the energy space, and we've deployed about, I think, 20% to 25% of the market.
In the meantime, we've done Belgium, we've done the Netherlands, Italy with smart meters, so, you know, it's a program that is well-perceived by the energy providers. Electric vehicles. In 2016, we obtained the first contract with the grid operator in Belgium. In the meantime, we've installed more than 25,000 EV chargers in our countries. Solar, we did an acquisition south of France, Perpignan, in 2018. Since then, we've grown the business. We've recently done an acquisition in the Netherlands, a company that is active in the Netherlands, but also Belgium and Germany. It's an engineering office from which we can absolutely grow in that space in those three countries as well, and it's, you know, certainly Belgium and Germany are very important solar markets in Europe.
And then the power grid. We've recently won a program for Fluvius. And it's not just the grid upgrade that we're doing, we're also upgrading the home connects from mono phase to three- phase, so that consumers can get more energy in their houses. What we are seeing, though, is that a lot of our customers are now asking for integrated solutions. So we have customers who are asking for solar panels, but can you also change the smart meter? Which is a requirement in Germany. You have, in the Netherlands, we have projects where, because of the congestion, we always need to install battery with a solar panel.
So we're seeing that the market is looking for more integrated solutions, and I think with our métier of smart meters and solar and EVC and grid, we can, you know, offer that end-to-end solution to many of our customers. I think we've got a pretty unique solution there for that space. Just a little bit around markets from a geographical perspective in the vertical markets, connectivity and energy. I have not put technology on this slide. It's a very, very fragmented market on the technology space, so I've chosen to do just connectivity and energy. The dots are our countries and where they are today on market share versus market opportunity. So an example, Germany is in the top left corner.
The market opportunity is really big in Germany, but our market share is not there yet, so we can grab market share in Germany. Whereas in the Benelux and France and Poland, we are a very important player in that market. We are one of the top three, if not the top player in the market. But the market opportunity is not necessarily as big in Poland as it is in Germany, right? So that's how you need to interpret the slide. On the energy side, however, you see that there's huge market, but most of our dots are on the low market share side. So, you know, on the energy space, we can certainly win and you know, create that next wave of growth for the group.
Technology was not on the dot slide, but just the new things we're looking into in the technology space. So for rail, we already provide services to SNCF in France for stations, Olympic Games we did things for, RATP. So, you know, we are in those stations already, and we can expand on that in other countries. In Belgium, for example, we have a service for digital meters and clocks in train stations, right? So train stations is an important thing. Facility management is something we do for SNCF as well. A lot of the train signaling today runs on copper, and if we have a failure of the tracks in Belgium, then it's often because somebody stole the copper. So what's happening across Europe is that the copper cable is being replaced with fiber cable.
Not just, you know, as a communication means, but, you know, for signaling, that move is happening. There's actually a program called ERTMS, European Rail Traffic Management System, whereby all of the signaling will be upgraded in the next year. At the moment, there are three countries that are a bit ahead, around 60% deployed. That's Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Belgium. But there are major opportunities to upgrade the signal and bring the signaling from outside into the train. I was talking to ProRail in the Netherlands, and it was, you know, so the manager was saying: "Give me a thousand Teslas, and I'll make the trains drive on its own," right? So that's what ERTMS is in that space. Lifts is a segment that we're investing in. We've got a company who started on lift maintenance.
A lot of the lifts that are running are a bit older and need upgrading. Lift technicians is a bottleneck profession, so if you have a lift technician that is from outside the European Union, you can get them easily in the European Union because for the last seven years, there was not enough lift technicians in Europe. So it's a very important market for us to look at. Now, last but not least, we believe that within the energy space, home energy management systems and energy efficiency applications will be an important part for us as well. We are doing already heat pump maintenance. We are doing a lot of smart thermo remote control of heating in houses, and that is smart thermo. So we believe that that's a market that we can look at.
Insulations, solar panels, glazing, maybe, so there's a lot of things to do for us in that segment as well. So that gives a bit of an overview of our market programs. I'm fanatic about it, so if you have questions, then please, please do approach me.
Wojtek.
Thank you. Good morning, everybody. My name is Wojtek Pomykała. My surname will not tell you, let's say, the country I'm coming from, like Lux, but I'm coming from Poland. And I will tell you a little about margins, what drives our margin, and what we did during the last two years, two, three years, to improve our margins. So short recap at the beginning. What drives our margin? What influence our margin? First of all, business cycles. I will tell a lot about that on the next slide, but this is the mainly very positive influence to our our margins. The second part, the second point, our customers very often have their own challenges: lack of financing, changes on the market, some acquisitions, some other changes in the macroeconomy, and this influence our the volumes we are delivering.
We are not able to stop the cost, stop the delivering the volume from day to day. It happens in Italy, in U.K., and it happens in Belgium as well this year. The next one, this is very interesting. Have you ever heard the story about the frog in boiling water? If you put the frog to the boiling water, the frog will jump out immediately. But if you put the frog to the cold water and start boiling this water, you boil the frog together with the water. And very often, we are asked by the customer to for small, gradual changes over here, over there. These changes are not really important if you are taking the small change separately, but if you are discussing the all changes together, this is the undesirable consequences to, for our business.
So this is. It was one of the reasons why we decided to leave some contracts. The last point, which is right our margin, this is the delay in the projects on the customer side. Very often, the customer has his own processes. The project is delayed, but eventually we are asked, "Do it faster, faster, and faster." So we are ramping up, and our business model is prepared for the medium size. But when the volume is going up, we are sometimes losing our margin, so we need some time to adapt our business model. Business cycles. First of all, this is the very positive influence to our business. The business cycles for our business, for the markets we operate, are very, very long. We are not talking about one, two years. We are talking about plus ten years.
FTTH construction, FTTH com, customer connection, smart metering, smart grid, these are the cycles when the margin can be generated. The high margin can be generated for a very long time, for plus 10 years. Additionally, maintenance, this is something recurring and can take much longer. Of course, we have there are some negative info, influence at the beginning of this business cycle and at the end of this business cycles. Just to give you a couple of examples. The first one, this is the ramp-up in Belgium, FTTH construction. We started in twenty twenty-one. At the beginning, small volume, negative EBITDA but when the volume increased, our EBITDA was very high and very positive. In the middle, on the mature market, when the market has the certain maturity, we can even improve our volumes and improve our margin.
This is the example from Poland, and this is example of FTTH customer connections. At the end, you can see the, on the right, bottom corner, you can see the example from Spain. This is the customer connections. The market in Spain is very, very mature. There is no possibility to grow on the FTTH customer connection or FTTH deployment, so the volume are decreasing. The distribution of volume is, let's say, not preferred for the partners, therefore, our margin is decreasing as well. The other point which influence our margin, this is the volume. At the beginning of the project, we have a lot of cost.
We need to have the field managers, we need to have the cars, we need to have the warehouses, we need to have a lot of trainings, some city managers, field managers. A lot of costs at the beginning, and our performance is not so high at the beginning, and additionally, the volume cannot bring the positive results. And then at the certain moment, the break-even point, we are starting to generate positive margin. We implemented several points, several actions in the group to speed up, to move this break-even point from the from this middle to the left. I will show you in the past... in the future, on the next slides, what we did in the to make it happen.
Still, we believe that we need to have the certain scale on the country level, and additionally, we need to have the certain scale on the activity level. We started to focus on the country level to really deliver the certain amount, certain volume per particular activity. What we did during the past two years, you saw the improvement of our margin over the last two years, and what we did to achieve it? First of all, there is no gold ticket. There is no something we can implement one thing, and everything will be perfect. We implemented several things, and there is the things which let us understand what is going on in this business, on the particular activity, on the particular countries, but we focus on the cost as well.
In the sense we focus on some particular countries, we rationalize our IT spending. I will tell it about it at the later stage as well. Just to give you some examples. We implemented completely new monthly business reporting. We are meeting with the countries every month, and we have the very standardized model, so we can understand the trends. We can understand all the details, not only on the level of the entire P&L, on the country P&L, but we can see everything together with the profitability, with the KPIs, with the revenue comparison to the revenue, comparison of the countries. We can see whether, for example, the logistics in one country is too expensive versus the other country having the same business.
We can compare the SG&A, we can compare the IT costs. So all the parameters on the country level, on the business level, activity level, segment level, we can compare quite easily based on this business reporting. Of course, we have as well the KPIs. We can see what is the level of healthy of business. So we can see whether there is the certain share of subcontractors, what is the productivity of technicians, what is the productivity of the best technicians, what is the productivity of the worst technicians, what we can focus on, on the particular country. And of course, we can compare the segments, we can see as well the headcount. So all the details which can bring the knowledge to the group, what we need to, how we need to react, and when we need to react. Examples.
These are the three good examples. U.K. In 2022, revenue are almost the same over the last three years, but in 2022, our margin in the U.K. was very negative. Our business model was not adjusted to the market. We did only mobile business, and we decided to change it. Change to how to assign the people, how to work with the subcontractors, what is to adjust the costs of SG&A to, and direct overhead to the group standards. It influenced profitability per U.K. over the last three years. This year, our revenue will be a little lower than last year, but our profitability is much, much higher. This is the...
On the graphs, you have the same scale, so you can compare. You can see what is the, what is the revenue per country, what is the EBITDA, and this, this orange line, this is the zero EBITDA. In Poland, over the last three years, we were able to really do a lot of the organization on the internal side, but as well, we increased the KPIs, increased the market share... Now, about Germany, this is one of the success stories Luc will tell much more in the latter part of the presentation. I presented you the break-even point. Do you remember the moment when we are starting to deliver the positive margin? And we decided to implement several actions to speed up, to move to this break-even point much, much more to the left, to just start bringing positive EBITDA faster.
Market program is one of these, of these ideas, so it is the common work of the operations and sales. We build the program which helps countries to start faster, to have the knowledge, to understand how the market is organized, what—which, which customer we should address, what should be the outcome, what—how we, we should be prepared. So the program is, was prepared, and, this is the main focus on this energy market, which is, which is growing significantly in Solutions 30. Something new, it was mentioned by Gianbeppi at the beginning, termination of negative contract. This business, monthly business reporting is providing to us some knowledge, and we understand whether we are positive or negative on the certain, certain activities.
And when we see that the margin is not good enough, then we need to do some actions. Of course, sometimes actually the EBITDA very often the EBITDA is good enough, so we do not do nothing. But when the EBITDA is below expected level we believe we can achieve, then we are trying to analyze what is the source of it. We see the activity, we split the activity per contracts, we split activity per customers, and we try to understand what is the source of the problem. Is it the B2C? Is it the B2B? Is it the particular customer? When we understand that, we have the first step. We start from ourselves.
So we try to understand what is the model of business, what is the productivity of technicians, what is the speed of subcontractor, how we manage the subcontractor, what is the logistics? So all of these aspects we analyze, we compare with the group standards just to bring the changes to the business to improve the margin. But sometimes this is not enough. Sometimes we are facing that even changing significantly the business model, we are not able to deliver the positive margin. Then we are trying to talk to the customer. There are some... Maybe we have the volume on the outside of the city, so the driving time is very long. So we need to discuss, renegotiate, maybe we need to change some conditions.
Sometimes we are not able to achieve on the operational side, on the contractual side, the positive outcome. Therefore, eventually, we decide to terminate the contract. This year, we terminate several contract in Spain, in U.K., but as we were able to renegotiate the contract with Orange, with TIM as well in Italy. What we are planning to do to improve it further? I just put the couple of examples over here. What is the most important for us for the next future, for the short future? We implemented the market programs, and we have this business review.
But very often, when there was the very big ramp up, very big increase of the volumes of the business in the particular country, countries are not experienced enough to look for all the aspects of the business. We are not looking how I'm going to calculate the WIP, how to decrease the WIP, what, what is the cash flow of the project, what is the model of the acceptance, how I can speed up the acceptance. There is a lot of details which we are trying to understand together with the countries, so we implemented something like the project verification template. Still, the same on the paper version, but we are going to digitalize it as well.
Just to spend a couple of hours with the country, the country understands all the aspects to see the big picture of the project from beginning to the end, and we understand what is the level of maturity or understanding the entire project, of the, on the country basis. This process should bring the increase of the acceptance, speed up the increase the cash flow, the positive cash flow, limit the penalties. So there is a lot of different benefits we can bring with this, with this process verification, project verification template. The next thing, call center. Our business is based very much on the support from the call centers. We have something like 2.5 billion calls every year. We are working from 13 countries. We are supporting 7 countries.
We have half of the call centers is internal, half of the call centers is external. So we decided to do the next step on to increase the maturity of our call center. First of all, to increase the automation, verify whether we are able to put offshore much more than we have today. It could bring significant savings for the group. And this is the project which we started couple of months ago, and so we expected it should bring next year significant improvement. I will return back to this break-even point. We implemented to move it to the left, to increase the margin from the beginning, so we implemented the market programs, and this is something additional.
We implemented the, I call it deep dive to the business, so that the first meeting was already done in Perpignan, in France. We sent the team from Germany, from Spain, and from Poland, and they spent a week together with the local team, just to understand all aspects of the business. How to prepare, how to structure this business from the organizational point of view, from the logistic point of view, from the health and safety, from the price calculation, from the customers. So all aspects during the week were discussed, and of course, there was the visit to the field, just to understand how the work looks like in reality. So this is the, let's say, fresh new pictures from the couple of weeks ago. It was the first such meeting. Right now, innovation, automation.
So the couple of examples which we are working on and which we already implemented. This is the example from Belgium. There is the project for smart metering, and technicians exchanges the meter to the smart meter, and then he's doing the picture of the smart meter. And this picture is verified with the ideal one. So the all aspects, if the all parts of the service were delivered properly, and the technicians receive the answer immediately. So there is no risk that he needs to go and return to this customer because something was not done properly. So this is the process which increased the first time right. We are almost 99.8% of the first time right with this tool.
SmartFix, our tool, our proprietary solution, which I will describe in the couple of minutes. And there's something we are doing additionally. We implemented the chatbot for the technicians. So having our technicians having the smartphone and the SmartFix can ask the system what they should do and receive some tips how to deliver the service successfully. And the next step we are doing, and we won the subsidy in Belgium, and we are preparing right now, machine learning solution. We have the very big database from in the SmartFix of the interventions.
So we are trying to find out the scheme, how the time of the day, competencies of the technicians, type of interventions, type of the customer, driving time, time of the day influence to our first time right. Just to increase the first time right, the system will automatically support technicians to avoid the problem during the installation, and two other examples, route optimization, this is the tool who analyze the and look for the shorter possible distance to travel, so our automated dispatcher adjust the tickets to the technicians, and then this is the system, this route optimizer, is working in the background, just rescheduling, moving the tickets between the technicians just to find out the lowest possible driving time.
This is the system allows to deliver something like up to 20% savings of the mileage per day. The last one, we started to use it a couple of weeks ago. This is the tool which support us with the as-built documentation in the control of the trenching. So during the FTTH deployment, we need our subcontractor are building the trench, but the trench need to be have the some parameters: the width, the depth, and there should be the right pipe inside. So the technician is going through the with the tablet next to this trenching. The system automatically doing the measures and provide to our center of the design the information about the as-built documentation. So big saving of time and cost.
The last part, the IT platforms. How our IT platforms looks like today. This is something we believe our, is our, competitive advantage, is going to be our competitive advantage in the future. First of all, just rough picture how our system are organized. We have the three parts of the system. First one is SmartFix. This is our own tool. I will describe it in the, on the next two slides. But the SmartFix, this is the tool for the B2B2C customers. So for every customer with the high volume, the ticket is delivered to technicians and we are working on this, on this tool of the all segments. It is the connectivity, we are delivering FTTH connection. This is the energy, implementation of the EV, EVC charger for the private customer, individual customer, or technology.
We are working with the customer to repair the PC, for example. So all the tickets, all the projects which are based on the end customers, individual customer, are based on the SmartFix. For projects, we started to implement IS Tools. IS T ools is the system which support us with managing the projects for FTTH deployment or B2C, B2B EVC. And our general systems, just a couple of words about the IT. We started migration to Amazon Cloud this year. We had the different data centers. This migration is 60-70% advanced. We should finish in a couple of two, maybe two, three months. And it's going to save EUR 500,000 this year and more than EUR 1 million from next year.
And for NetSuite, for the accounting, for the finance, we implemented NetSuite together with you, with the workflow, and this is going to increase the possibility to close the financials faster than today. We work, of course, Office 365, and this is something which we as well speed up because during a lot of acquisition in the past, some of the acquisition didn't work in the Solutions 30 tenant. So we implemented, so we are migrated this new acquisitions, new entities to the tenant as well. And additionally, we implemented some savings based on the verification of the type of the account and deactivating the accounts which are not used anymore.
IT security, this was a lot of work during the last year. So we have the SentinelOne, we have SIEM, we are doing the penetration test, we have the SOC, we implemented the ISO 27001 in France, and we are very advanced with the NIS2. So we did a lot just to prevent potential interruption to our systems. We can even, with the SIEM, match the different types of the attacks in the different systems just to understand whether it is one entire big try to penetrate our systems. SmartFix. So this is something which gives us a quite big competitive advantage. This is our own system, integrated with the customers.
So we have the real-time integration with several IT customers, telco customers, so tickets are delivered directly to our system and directly to the technicians. The system is scalable. There is a lot of features, a lot of interventions. One hundred and fifty projects were implemented in SmartFix. How the system works? In real time, the tickets are delivered to the SmartFix from the customer. Then the tickets are automatically assigned to the technicians via automated dispatcher. A lot of our customers do not have the automated dispatcher yet. This automated dispatcher is working on the competencies of the technicians, so the technicians only with certain competencies will be assigned to the particular ticket.
There is the availability of a calendar of technician availability, so only the ticket will be assigned to the technician which who is available the particular day. We can see the map, we can see the status, we can. This is the Uber-like so solution, so the customer can see whether the technician is going to the to the interventions, if it is delayed, or this is the intervention was successful. We can have the NPS, we can have a lot of reportings. In general, the system delivers something like 1,000 different features. So we believe that this is the something which we can develop further, implement this AI solution, the machine learning, just to keep our competitive advantage in the future. Thank you. Denis?
Hello, I'm Denis Colle. I'm the HR director of the group, and I'm delighted to be able to present the group HR policy to you. This HR policy is based on a simple principle that is worth remembering: HR is not about HR, HR is about business. I would like to first go back to the fundamentals that have made the success of Solutions 30's HR policy, and on which we will continue to capitalize. Then secondly, address the highlights of the HR policy to go further, and finally, address a specific and apparently paradoxical subject on the level of turnover. To start with, with the HR fundamentals of success, of Solutions 30, as I said, we will continue to capitalize on these fundamentals.
Concerning the question of recruitment, for example, both in its sourcing and in its integration, we apply similar logic for employees and subcontractors. Solutions 30 has proven its ability to lead an effective HR policy, in particular, by carrying out massive recruitments quickly, whether employees or subcontractors. We recruit all types of profiles, and we have a solid recruitment team with agility and who knows how to rely on operational managers, who are, in my point of view, the first actors of the HR function. Massive achievement has just been able to be achieved, in particular on Linky market, with 5,000 recruitments over seven years, or recently, 200 people recruitment for Olympic Games in three months, with original approaches in street marketing, marketing in train stations and in very agile approach.
37% of our employees are under 30 years of age, and the investment in training is significant, with an average of 28 hours per new recruit. Sourcing relies on a variety of channel partnerships with different organizations, local missions, job center or market street in train station, as I said previously. Our fundamentals also concern the remuneration and incentive system, with a basic salary at a minimum wage most of the time, but highly incentivized on results. These fundamentals are retained and must be completed by addition to constitute the HR policy block. We are leading the development of the employer brand, support and sharing of good practices, and HR development. The employer brand must be based on the desire of new generation to experience regular changes in activities.
Thus, our strength is directly linked to our ability to offer these candidates, prospects for changes in activity and profession. For example, to start in telecom and then to move to energy. Our employer brand is evolving by moving women and men from Solutions 30 before Solutions 30 into this new line of communication. That's important to put people, inside our communication line, and speak about people, to offer visibility to our employer brand. Cross-functional development is an asset for retaining employees, when we do not have 100% promotion capacity, although 50% of all managers come from internal promotion.
HR support is mainly linked to the sharing of best practices, with the example that Wojciech presented to you on the visit, for example, of team from Spain, Poland, and other countries and Germany, to the southwest with the energy teams in Perpignan. We are developing our agility in terms of international mobility, as we said previously also, by recruiting in various European countries to mobilize competent teams in the different countries, especially in lift, as we said, in lift activities. The creation of an HR campus with best practices that will be shared with allow us to move faster and allow less mature countries in certain markets to save time to penetrate them by benefiting from the experience of others.
As we said, concerning how to improve margin, we said that a way to go further is to share these best practice, to go faster, to improve margin. To conclude this presentation, I would like to highlight a specific subject of our HR policy and which concerns the desired level of turnover. This is part of our policy, because our 30% turnover rate is well managed and now a strategic lever for renewing talent, optimizing costs, improving performance, and strengthening the employer brand. The five positive factors of turnover are as follows: regularly onboard new talent with fresh perspectives and modern skills, boosting innovation and creation.
Second, re-review compensations and benefits to optimize costs, invest in training new employees, encourage internal mobility to strengthen Solutions 30 culture of flexibility, and excellence. And finally, adapt quickly to market changes and fluctuation in demand. Thank you for your attention. And now let's watch a video of why we illustrate the evolution from, activity to others.
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Okay, coffee break is upstairs and we'll be back in fifteen minutes.
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Good morning, good morning everyone. So, this video is a good introduction for the next topic we are going to, to talk about, since we are going to talk about France first and then the other countries.
... the group initiated its activities in France back in two thousand and three, and over the last twenty years, we have built up a strong presence covering the whole country with more than 60, with more than 6,000 technicians. Building up on this historic presence, we have, France is pioneering in terms of business diversification, and we have a well-diversified group of activities, since we are covering the whole offerings of the group. In two thousand and twenty-three, France generated a revenue of EUR 403 million and an EBITDA of 8.8%. Over the last two years, France went through a deep transformation, since we had to adapt to new market conditions and we had to develop a new positioning on new activities, generating new opportunities.
The Linky smart meters rollout stopped at the end of 2022. The fiber activity is entering into a phase of maturity, with a decline in the deployment of the optic network, but the stabilization of the maintenance activity, which is even slightly increasing. The technology segment is a segment which continues to provide recurring maintenance activities, and we have invested a lot in the energy transition-related technologies, which are a booming sector for us, offering very large opportunities for the coming years. So we have a number of assets in France, and our sales strategy for the next two years is extremely clear. We will continue to develop our maintenance activities across all verticals, as these activities generate a recurring revenue.
On top of that, we will develop our activities on new emerging markets, which offer very promising opportunities. The first opportunity is the decommissioning of the copper network. There are millions of kilometers of copper in France, and each ton is worth around 11,000 EUR. This project is about to start and could generate large opportunity for Solutions 30. The second very large opportunity is the energy transition, and all the technologies that we need in order to produce and consume differently or more efficiently in the coming years. In terms of margins, France has always been a driving force for the group.
In two thousand and twenty, France showed the resilience of its operating model since we had to adapt to a sudden shutdown of our, of certain of our activities in two thousand and twenty, with a quick recovery of this activity while protecting our margins during this period. In two thousand and twenty-two, France faced two massive shocks at the same time. First one was the termination of the Linky rollout, and the second one was the operational transition in the telecom sector with the integration of Scopelec's activities just after this company went bankrupt. So margins were adversely affected temporarily in two thousand and twenty-two, but then quickly recovered under the effect of a massive transformation plan that we initiated at the end of two thousand and twenty-two.
This transformation plan was designed in order to improve our profitability, and it was based on five pillars. First, we reorganized our energy activities and built an offer around renewable energy generation plants, smart grids, energy renovation, and other emerging applications, such as EV chargers, smart thermostats. Two, we developed the versatility of our technicians in order to have technicians capable to work all across our verticals. Three, we completed the integration of Scopelec activities and worked on the optimization of our model. Four, we worked on the optimization of our processes. We pursued the industrialization of our operations in order to maximize synergies. And finally, five, we adopted a set of measures in order to cut costs at central level. Let's now have a look at the fixed telecom French market.
After peaking at EUR 3.6 billion in 2021, as you can see, this telecom market is entering into a phase of maturity, but nevertheless, it presents significant opportunities for us in the coming years. What you can see on this graph is that the copper maintenance activity is naturally declining, which was expected as it is gradually replaced by the fiber optic network. In the fiber activity, there are actually different dynamics. The construction of the network is actually, you know, coming to an end, the light gray part, because now in France, most French people have fiber in front of their house.
But the client-facing activities related to fiber, which are the core business of Solutions 30, are actually stabilizing, and the maintenance part is even slightly increasing currently. What we see on top of that is that a new project is taking shape, the decommissioning of copper that I was mentioning. This could represent a very large opportunity for Solutions 30 and a potential addressable market of EUR 1 billion per year. The telecom market in France changed radically over the last years, and these new challenges can be turned into opportunity for Solutions 30, provided that we adapt our operations to these new challenges.
The first challenge for telecom operators is to complete the connection of the whole population to the fiber optic network, since there are still large number of customers who are not connected to fiber currently, and especially the business clients. As you can see on the graph, only two out of three business clients are currently connected to fiber. Two, the telecom operators are facing a strong pressure on their margins currently. So that means that we need to continue to optimize our operations in order to meet the requirements of our customers in terms of pricing, and in some cases, we'll have to accept to terminate some activities when the prices are not high enough. Third challenge is related to the new policy of telco operators.
Over the last years, the priority was given to the acquisition of new customers. So the operational challenge was to connect as many customers as possible in a limited time. Now, the objective is to retain these customers. So that means that telco operators need to rely on partners who have a dense network of technicians covering the whole territory and able to fix, you know, the issues when a customer has a breakdown, so that to avoid that the customers goes to the competition and subscribe an internet connection with another telco operator. As this fiber network is being deployed, there are also new opportunities, new emerging trends coming on this market and challenges.
The first challenge is to develop the resilience of the fiber network in order to avoid, you know, climate hazard. The other challenge is to remove the former copper network in order to cut down the costs for the telco operators. Our strategy on the telecom market will definitely be to prioritize efficiency and profitability while keeping a focus on the maintenance activities which are for generating revenue. We will continue to optimize our operations in order to meet our customers' requirements in terms of prices and quality. We will continue to develop a selective policy in the management of our contracts, and we will terminate some activities if we are not able to meet group standards in terms of profitability.
And in terms of business development, we have just started a new business relationship with the fourth telecom operator, and we will stay close from our other telco operators and our historic customers, and especially to assist them in their new challenges related to the decommissioning of the copper network. Of course, this ambition goes along with an HR strategy, where we plan to develop the skills of our customers and adapt these skills to the new challenges facing this industry in France. Just one word on this HR topic. Denis mentioned a churn of 30%. This only concerns our technicians since, you know, keeping our technicians, our managers, aboard is extremely important.
Let's now talk about the energy market in France, which is definitely the most promising market for us in France. The energy transition has started and is even accelerating. Currently, 20% of the energy that we consume in France is green. The ambition is to increase this level up to 33% by 2030. So that means that the production of solar energy, the production of biomethane, will be multiplied by four by 2030. In the same time, the number of EV chargers will be multiplied by five.
This dynamic is not just a good intent. It is framed by a number of laws which supports this acceleration dynamic, and especially the, you know, this law called the ENR, voted in two thousand and three, which make it compulsory for all the parking lots exceeding one thousand five hundred square meters to be covered with solar panels. The multiplication of, you know, green energy production units and the new consumer uses obviously call for a transformation of the power grids. Here is an illustration of the massive investments which are going to come on the French market with Enedis. On this document coming from Enedis, you can see that Enedis plans to increase its maintenance budget from EUR 3.5 billion to up to EUR 5 billion.
Enedis is spending more in one year than the 4 telecom operators when the fiber was at the peak. It's really a massive investment. It's more money than Enedis invested into the rollout of smart meters. Currently, we are already performing these operations for Enedis. We made last year a revenue of approximately EUR 10 million, and we will assist Enedis in this challenge for the next coming years. Obviously, we will deploy the same strategy with all the other energy network operators like GRDF or Veolia, who are already customers of Solutions 30. In terms of strategy, we want to focus on the high potential activities where Solutions 30 can leverage on a recognized knowledge and where we have a competitive advantage.
First of all, we are working on the installation of these green energy production units, you know, and we have a major position today in France. We are installing... we have 18% market share in this installation of solar plants in France, exceeding one mega. We are also working, as I just said, on the transformation and upgrade of the energy grids. And here, what will be important for the network operators is the ability to scale up our existing business very quickly in order to address their growing needs. And finally, we also work on all the energy applications, you know, at the residential or office premises. So namely installation of EV chargers, installation of smart thermostats.
Here in this market, and especially the energy renovation market, which is booming, what is important for our customers is to rely on a partner with an industrial model, able to deploy a new technology across the whole France. Our roadmap for the energy segment is extremely ambitious for France in the next coming years. We plan to triple our revenue. We want to reach the threshold of EUR 150 million of revenue per year as from 2026. This stronger dynamic will be mostly organic. We will leverage on our existing portfolio of customers.
We will leverage on our existing capabilities, but it will also be supported by M&A acquisitions, since this market is still extremely fragmented, and we want to consolidate our position on this market. So we will continue, just like we did, you know, over the last two months, the last twelve months, with the two acquisitions that we made in France. Profitability will remain a focus for us. We have good margins on this segment, and we expect to keep the double-digit margins all over this period, leveraging on our strong expertise. Of course, this goes along with an ambitious HR policy, since we will have to recruit and train a large number of people to manage this growth.
France, in a nutshell, our organization now is ready to take up the challenges on our markets. On the energy market, you have understood that the market is there. We have a clear plan. We want to triple our revenue by 2026. And on the connectivity, we will work on stabilizing our revenue on this segment, and this objective actually combines two different strategies. On the one hand, we will continue to apply a selective policy in the management of our contracts to be sure that we meet the group standards in terms of profitability. And on the second hand, we will deploy an ambitious sales development strategy and especially on the large corporate decommissioning opportunity.
In terms of margins, you know, we are already close to the double-digit level, and we confirm that we will reach this level by this 10% level by 2026. Let me now introduce a video that will give you an insight on our solar business in France with Cyril Lefort, who is leading this activity for us in France.
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Now I leave the floor to Ton.
Good morning, everybody. I'm Ton Bosters, CEO of Unit-T, representing the Benelux today. The Benelux is a specific country because it's not a country. It consists of three countries, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, and we have coverage in each country as Solutions 30. It's based on a joint venture with Telenet in Belgium, and a specific group for the other telecom operators, and two specific groups in the Netherlands and Luxembourg. We started the business in two thousand and fifteen, and as expanded it in two thousand and seventeen to the Netherlands and afterwards to Luxembourg. Currently, with the 2,900 technicians and a revenue of last year, EUR 382 million and an EBITDA of EUR 11.4 million.
As you can see, we have a mix of our activities on all the activities that we provide as Solutions 30, based on telecom operations, energy, and technology. If we look and dive into the possibilities of the market in the Benelux, we see that there are unique opportunities for growth and for stabilizing our revenue in the upcoming years. The first one is the telecom market, where we see that the Dutch market is already at a mature market.
I will explain in more detail in the next slides. Belgium, on the other hand, is still a growing market. It's just starting the fiber rollout, and we are investigating and trying to find solutions how we can help our operators to build a network as smooth and as fast as possible. As you maybe know, there are some specific things ongoing in the Belgian market.
It's the first country where telecom operators work together to find a solution to roll out a network, a single network, where all the operators could connect. It's an ongoing discussion at the moment, which will probably have a first announcement at the end of the year, beginning of next year, but it will be a unique situation that could probably be used in other countries in the near future as well. The energy market is different. If you look to the Netherlands, the Netherlands has a huge problem in the energy market, and they have a lot of congestion on the network. If you want to start a new plant, it could be that you are not able to start a plant because they cannot connect it to the energy. So that's one of the biggest problem that they have.
If you look to the Belgium market, they are more advanced in how they build a network. They need to invest as well, but they don't have the problem of congestion yet. So they have more possibilities to avoid this situation. In the technology market, it's a very mature market. We see volumes coming in, but we also see that the internet service providers are changing their models, and we need to find a way how we can help them in changing these markets. And as already mentioned in the beginning of the presentation, huge possibilities in the rail market.
Rail in a situation where we can track the trains, where we have safety in the network, but on the other hand, also in the stations, in building security solutions, in finding ways how to install fire alarms and all that kind of things. So if you look to the short to mid outlook, it's a strong possibility for the Benelux. Excellent business prospects available and just signed contracts, which I will explain a little bit later. A well-established organization ready to be able to grow together with our customers, but a real focus on operational excellence and a progressive ramp-up in the energy activities. But we have some challenges this year, beginning of next year.
As already mentioned, these discussions, currently ongoing, are slowing down the rollout at the moment, which have an impact on our, on our revenue, also challenging on our EBITDA. And what we also see, and that's, a thing that's currently ongoing, is the elections. We have elections, ongoing in the municipalities in October, and what we see is that municipalities are really blocking several activities at the moment. They don't want to have any disturbance in activities ongoing when elections are going, and that's what we're feeling, and it's impacting our revenue at the moment. Diving into the points, connectivity is the first one. You can see that the markets per country are slightly different. First, the Netherlands.
the Netherlands, the rollout of the fiber is already in a very mature way executed, and even in several cities, we have multiple networks already lying in the ground, so it means that the coverage of the network is already at 82%, and it means that only rural areas are the last ones that can be connected to the fiber network. Flanders, on the other hand, is just starting, so a lot of things are ongoing. As already mentioned, telecom operators talking together. The Wallonia, which is also trying to find ways if they can create a similar model, like, the Flanders teams did. And it means that we have a holdback on the rollout at the moment.
So they first want to be sure what will be the approved model, and based on the approved model, they can make decisions how they roll out in the next years. On the other hand, if you focus first, build the network, afterwards you need to connect the customers to the network. It's a part that is huge in both countries. In the Netherlands, currently around 30%, means that we still are a possibility of 70%. What is challenging in the Benelux countries is that there is a dense HFC network, so the quality of the existing coax is a lot higher than the old PSTN networks that the French telecom has. Means speed and quality of service is rather high, still rather high, so the need for change is not really, at the moment, the most important one.
They need to change. They know they need to change, but customers are more or less still waiting. Is this the right moment? So that, that moment will come, very sure, and very fast. But customers need to adapt to change, and if the adaption takes place, the speed up of the home connect will grow very, very fast. As you can see in the graph, the Dutch situation, currently around 32%, the Belgian situation, just around 7%. So it means there's a lot of things that needs to go on, to get all the customers connected to the new fiber networks in the Benelux. In these services, we are the top three in the Benelux, offering end-to-end solutions for legacy and for fiber to the home services.
We have a unique partnership with Telenet, which enables us to not think only in the field services, but also help our customer in optimizing their full processes, connect to our customers with a SmartFix platform, so that we can really connect together on process optimization and finding ways how we can optimize the cost for our customers. This provides diverse and complete client coverage, which has all our customers. I think they are available in the telecom market, like KPN, like Orange, like Telenet, and Fiberklaar, as a few of these examples. The energy market, as you already heard by multiple presentations, is one of the huge advantages and possibilities that we have as Solutions 30 for growth.
If you look specifically to the Belgian markets, we see a growth possibility for more than EUR 20 billion in the upcoming 5 years. We expect also a huge growth on the PV market, which is not that big at the moment in the Benelux. But there are some regulations that will push companies to invest in PV in the upcoming years, based on the fact that if you have a building as a company, you need to invest in the upcoming years. And that will have a huge impact and possibilities for us to grow in this specific market. Smart meter rollouts is in the Netherlands already executed, Belgium currently ongoing. In the Netherlands, they have a challenge because the smart meters in the Netherlands are still connected to the 2G network, GPRS.
That needs to be changed because it will be cut down in the upcoming years. That means that a lot of smart meters that were rolled out in the past again needs a visit from the technicians to move to a different telecom platform. So that's an activity that we can provide for those customers. For Fluvius, we're rolling out the smart meters in this year, the upcoming year. And then we have the long tail, and the long tail exists of the most the more difficult swaps that need to take place. Currently, we only do the easiest versions just swapping meters, but the last 20 meters will also need an adaption in the connection towards streets. And then, of course, EV charging.
As Luc already mentioned, Belgium, together with the Netherlands and Norway, are the early adopters of energy and EVC cars and also very soon, trucks. And it means that there is a lot of investment ongoing and needs to be done for the upcoming years. And if you see how we can then connect to these opportunities, we see that we already have a lot of opportunities where we do connect with the customers. I think a recent one, in April this year, we have won the tender with Fluvius, where they invest in the upgrades of the grid in the upcoming years, where we have signed a contract for a minimum of 1,000 km of grid that needs to be upgraded in the upcoming 5 years.
We are looking for possibilities how we can expand our knowledge and our technician base towards the Wallonia area, because they have similar challenges as well. They are currently just starting those activities, so smart meter is just picking up. The investments on the network are not really started yet, so that means that there are also opportunities for us to grow in that market in the Wallonia area. In the Netherlands, we bought a company called Xperal. It's specific engineering company that focuses on delivery of PVs, B2B solutions in Belgium, the Netherlands, and also in Germany, which will help us in picking up that specific PV market in the upcoming years. And then last, and as already mentioned, we have the knowledge of smart meters.
We can use it to help our customers in roll-outs that they still need to do, but also help them in how they can use the data of those smart meters to do smart investment in the networks. Specifically, a specific thing that we do for our customer in telecom, where we use data from modems to translate it into some kind of proactive maintenance, and that's something that we could also do for our energy operators. So that's knowledge that we could share in the upcoming years with them. Finally, technology. Technology, as already mentioned, IT market slightly declining in service ticket, but still a stable market, where there's a lot of focus on cost efficiency.
As already explained by Wojciech, a lot of programs currently ongoing over there to optimize as much as we can on those activities by using tooling, optimization, route optimization, BI analysis, and train technician multi-skilled, so that they not only can do the services for a printer, but they can also do the services for computers or other services. In the specific market of security and then mainly, of course, physical security, we see that our customers are struggling because there's a lot of new equipment on the market which self-installs themselves, which for them makes the market very difficult, and they try to find ways how they can change their models for a way that they can survive and can grow again, and that's what we are discussing with them.
How can we help them with our knowledge in the EVC market, in the connectivity market, to help them develop these models and build again stable working packages that we can provide to them? And last, on this one, is rail. As already mentioned, we're currently connecting with all the customers in the Benelux market, on the ERTMS system, as already mentioned, the system that will track the train and will make the network safer.
Of course, also the possibility of all the knowledge that we have on technology, on the fiber networks, on our security knowledge that we have, using that information and that knowledge for them, for the specific stations they have, the buildings that they have that they need to maintain, and those kind of things that we can serve, and it can help them all. So if you look to the Benelux roadmap, then 2026, I think what we developed in the last five years is a unique Posse internal training center, as already mentioned by Denis. Finding people already trained at school with all the knowledge is not possible anymore, so we need to train our technicians for the job.
Sometimes bridges, sometimes people are switching from one technology to another technology, and we have our internal training centers that we use to help those technicians grow into the next level. There's a video at the end of the session today which shows the Unit-T Training Center, so you will see it later on. We have long-term contracts with our customers, which means, of course, also for our people some kind of job security, that they can invest in themselves, we can invest in technology, we can invest in new things. Sometimes you hear that Unit-T is working on this, Unit-T is working on that.
30 is investing and helping us to do those kind of investments and help them grow new things that we afterwards can use in other countries and optimize in that way, the sustainability, but also the profitability of our services. Duplicate, adapt successful processes and tools, and leverage on our unique partnership with a lot of our subcontractors, because these are very important to be able to scale and downscale without a huge impact on our profitability. So the path to the growth of opportunities, growth areas are the power grid, rail, as really big opportunities for the Benelux as well. Maintain the top three partner in the fiber, continuously improve, find new ways or better ways how we can provide our service to a customer at a lower cost, and of course, improve our margins.
Our objectives, as a last slide for today, from my point of view, is the sustainability growth. As mentioned, we see that this year will be a little bit lower, based on the fact that I already mentioned the slowdown, especially in the Belgian market, on the fiber to the home, but we will be growing again in twenty twenty-five as soon as there is a green light or a red light, and everybody knows how we can move on for the telecom operators. And then, again, above the 10% on the EBITDA. And then I give it up to Luc.
Thank you. Germany, building our third pillar. You know, I said yesterday to my almost countryman, I spend a lot of time in Germany. Nowadays, you know, it's my new favorite country. There's a lot of things going on in Germany. I'd like to, you know, take you through what we're doing in Germany. Today we are about 750 technicians. That's about a 140 more than we were at the beginning of the year. We're starting on fiber and, you know, there's mainly addition of subcontractor technicians in that fiber space. Today, we are 70/30. Don't think it's the right mix, needs to be another mix, but, you know, we're 70/30, internal versus subcontractors. Last year, we did about EUR 63.8 million in Germany.
And this year that will be increasing. Our EBITDA was a good 6.3% in Germany, so not bad, but not super. And we've been in that market for a long time already, right? So we were celebrating our 10 years this year in Germany. We are mainly in the south in Germany, so the orange space is where we have operations today. So that's, you know, Baden-Württemberg, Bayern, and Thüringen, Saxony. So that's the areas that we cover. We've recently moved up into other areas, mainly for telecoms. Telecom is our main business in Germany today. And you see the large blue part, that's the connectivity space, the telecom space.
North Rhine-Westphalia, Rheinland-Pfalz, Saarland, so that area, west-northwest of Germany, is an area that interests us a lot, and we've been expanding there. A bit of a view of the German market. The German telecom market has been liberalized for 25 years, but Deutsche Telekom still does 75% of the German market, right? There are lots of players, 200 outlets in Germany. The market is really, for a major part, divided by Telekom and their challenger, Vodafone. Another thing that is pretty specific in Germany for what we're doing in the telecom space is that everything in Germany is trenched. There's no ducts, no poles, no façade, everything is trenched, right? You can see at the pictures below what our subcontractors are doing in Germany, you know, trenching.
On the energy market, Germany is a bit specific as well. Germany is one of the countries in Europe, one of the few countries in Europe that said, "You know, let's stop nuclear," after Fukushima. You know, the Green Party was very, very strong in their desire to get out of nuclear. So Germany went to gas, Russian gas, and then, you know, what's on the picture happened, right? That's Nord Stream one in the Baltic Sea got attacked. Still don't know precisely by who, Ukraine or Russia, but, you know, it was a big shock for the German market because all of a sudden they had to massively invest in green energy and renewable energy. Germany is also an industrial nation. The picture below is from Ludwigshafen.
You know, I go past that plant very often when I drive to Stuttgart, and, you know, it's just immense. It's 50-60 km of industry along the Rhine River between basically Darmstadt and Ludwigshafen, Worms. And but it, but it's causing, you know, a very bad CO2 footprint in Germany, compared to other countries. You know, there's a lot of electrification that still needs to happen in Germany, in the industry. The technology market is a very mature market, IT-wise, software-wise, cybersecurity, data protection, you know, very, very important topics in Germany. And it is a very mature market in that space. However, on rail, road, bridges, Germany has been lagging behind a little bit. They've been holding back investments as a country.
But we're seeing that, you know, for example, the German government pulled out a large amount of shares of Deutsche Telekom to invest in Deutsche Bahn. So there's lots investments going into Deutsche Bahn as part of the green move towards, you know, more sustainable mobility in the German market. Okay? So that gives a bit of a view of, you know, why Germany, in my view, is one of a kind in Europe. It's also a very big market. It's the biggest market in Europe. On the connectivity side, you know, and I'll start with the left side of the graph, which represents the home connection in Germany. And you see the pink is DSL from Telenet, from Telekom, sorry, Deutsche Telekom. So 70% of German households still have a DSL connection.
The green part is coax. It's a one gig coax, so it's good quality coax, and is supported by Vodafone. Actually, you can see that, you know, in the last couple of years, coax has been growing, so coax has been taking away customers from DSL. Coax is our historical business in Germany. The top two parts, the blue part is what competitors of Telekom have done on home connects in fiber, and the red part is what Telekom has done on home connect in fiber. Okay, so a lot of things still to do on the home connect part. About 10% of Germany is connected on fiber today. If you look at the right side of the screen, then you see where fiber is deployed. So that's the homes passed network.
About 40% of homes passed have been deployed, and you see that mainly in Eastern Germany and in the north. You, that's where the fiber has been deployed. Reason is that that's where the DSL was not so good. In the other parts of Germany, the DSL quality is much better 'cause of vectoring. 400 megabit is what you can get out of a DSL cable in Germany. But in the south, you know, you see very little deployment, very little penetration of fiber still. So, you know, that's also why we concentrate on that region, right? So, south and northwest. The bottom pie chart shows you who is deploying fiber in Germany, who is doing the homes passed, and you see the pink part is Deutsche Telekom.
They built the most fiber in Germany, followed close, you know, followed by a large distance, Deutsche Glasfaser, EQT, private equity, WestConnect, it's E.ON that provides that funding. Unsere Grüne Glasfaser, that's Telefónica and Allianz. Vodafone is also deploying together with Altice. And then there's a bunch of very, very small ones, okay? Mainly, local companies, Stadtwerke, so local municipalities that are deploying fiber. So it's a very specific market, almost 200 alt nets that provide internet services in Germany. So what's our approach in the market? So we've been focusing with our connectivity space on six large customers. Vodafone is our traditional customer in Germany.
It's our biggest customer, and we do coax support, customer installations, customer maintenance, multi-dwelling unit connectivity, the network support of Vodafone in the south. Right, so that's our area, Baden-Württemberg and Bayern. But we have been working and closing big contracts lately with GlasfaserPlus, Telekom, UGG, Deutsche GigaNetz and Deutsche Glasfaser. Right, so we're in the big six, as I call them, to deploy fiber networks. But we will not forget coax and copper for a while, because a lot of home activation is still happening on coax and DSL. Actually, when we started doing fiber connections for Deutsche Telekom, they said: "Look, you know, we'll give you the fiber, but you need to assist us with the copper as well." Right, so it is still something. Now, we've got the big contracts in place.
We are doing the first cities. We need to expand our capability. So, you know, I call that grow and expand, you know, our capabilities in that market. We also need to enter those new regions more solidly, right? So North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland, talked about that. There's new cities being awarded to us in those areas. We also still want to expand our coax business. So we're in the south. We're looking with Vodafone, other areas that we can cover, where we can pick up from competitors that are not as agile as we are. And then, you know, we're still looking at new solutions with some of the telcos, you know, Wi-Fi in home and for businesses, IoT, even EV charging for Deutsche Telekom is something that we're looking at.
On the energy market, what is very specific in Germany is that there is not one Enedis. There's about one thousand two hundred Enedis, and some of them have grouped together, so there's about nine hundred and eighty Stadtwerke, they're called, that are responsible for the grid in their city municipality. So if you want to attack the market, you have to go out to a lot of potential customers. Now, the good thing is, you know, these Stadtwerke are trying to do group purchases because not every Stadtwerke has the knowledge, the capability to take care of their grid. So you know, there is lots of cooperation. As for transport networks, mainly from north to south, there are seventeen providers in Germany, so that's a bit, you know, the scale of that market.
There is some legislation coming out of the German market for the grid operators as well. They are obliged to start deploying digital electricity meters. Today, about 20% of Germany has got a smart meter, but there is an obligation to have smart meters in place for all customers that consume more than 6,000 kilowatts per year. Meaning if you're a heat pump, an EV charger customer, if you have solar panels, you will get a smart meter by 2026, 2028, sorry. Dynamic tariffing needs to be in place by 2025.
And what is specific is that to avoid congestion, a law in Germany also enables the grid operators to reduce the number of energy going to some houses, for a period of time, to make sure that there is no congestion on the network. So even the 20% of meters that have been deployed already will be changed to bi-directional meters, where you can, you know, monitor that and change the consumption of a household. So very specific for the German market. Germany is also the biggest PV market by far in Europe. If you look at the PV solar per capita, much more in Germany than in other countries. And actually, the plans for Germany is to deploy another 104 gigawatts by 2028. Smart meter rollout, talked about that.
By 2030, there needs to be 100% deployment. There are big grid upgrades. You know, the Bundesnetzagentur has you know predicted investments of EUR 110 billion by the Stadtwerke until 2033. There's also a good EVC network in certain parts of Germany, but there is parts of Germany where the EVC network is not that deployed, so we're looking at that part as well. So how do we, you know, approach that market? And, you know, I always think in terms of attack plans. You know, attack the competition, attack the market, attack the program, attack. You know, so we've got a plan for Germany, and we will start with PV. As you've seen from the first slide, we've got a small PV business in Germany.
We're expanding that. The M&A of Xperal in the Netherlands, who already have business in Germany, western Germany, is helping us immensely to make that happen, that B2B PV, PV opportunity. So we'll grab a good part of that market. And then we'll approach that market as an EPC partner, right? So we'll go to the market, we'll look for customers, developers, who will work with us as an installation partner for engineering, the procurement part, the commissioning part, as well as the maintenance and monitoring part. So we're approaching that market as a complete EPCM partner. We will still do some B2C in that market, but the B2C market is very volatile. Sometimes you have subsidies, sometimes you don't. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it's snow, sometimes it's sunshine.
You know, it's very, very volatile, so we're trying to focus on B2B. With that PV will automatically come storage, energy storage, so battery solutions, EV chargers, and energy management systems, you know, as part of the monitoring solution. We will, of course, look at the power grid, we will, of course, look at the smart metering, and we will, of course, look at IoT in that space as well. You know, smart thermo is something that we've done a lot in France, in Belgium in the past, so we'll certainly look at that in Germany as well. That's our approach to the market in Germany. Today, we've got a well-filled order book. We've got a rollout plan for 130,000 homes passed, 17,000 homes connect.
So we've got a big backlog to fulfill in Germany from those main customers that I talked about. And we have a funnel of new opportunities coming in, you know, to make sure that our order book stays at that level. We will leverage our legacy knowledge and grow our fiber position because of that. What you see in Germany, there's a lot of companies that can deploy Homes Passed, but there's not a lot of companies that do Home Connect well. So we're gonna use that Home Connect knowledge, Home Connect capability, to make sure that we're selected for the Homes Passed part. We have margin improvement plans in place. We were three separate companies, we've already merged two. We're gonna merge the two remaining companies into one structure.
We're moving from a company structure to a BU structure. That enables savings, savings that Wojciech already talked about. And what we're seeing is that the business that we are adding, the fiber business, the energy business, drives better margins than our legacy business. You know, the margin improvement programs are in place. What we do focus on in Germany, and I must say, the team has done a tremendous job with that, is working capital. If you have that big growth, you need to have the capital to fund that big growth. Germany has been, you know, a country where we've been investing in the past. Now, Germany is returning some of that capital to the group, so we're well cash positive in Germany. Our expectations midterm 2026 to be between EUR 150 million and EUR 200 million.
We were 64, so you're looking at 35-50% compound annual growth rate for our company in Germany. We believe that our margins will be... our EBITDA will be well above the 10% in Germany by 2026.
Mm-hmm. So, Wojciech.
Thank you.
Welcome again. So my colleagues presented three main geographies. I will present the rest of Europe. Actually, this is the countries located in the farthest east, west, north, and south of Europe. In these countries, we have the three groups of countries. First of all is Poland, which is a very strong performer, good EBITDA, good growth over the last couple of years. We have U.K., just after recentralization, ready to go to the next level. And we have the two countries, Spain and Italy, where we have certain challenges, and we are doing a lot to improve our margins. So let's talk shortly about one slide for each country. Poland.
We started in Poland two thousand and eighteen, and Poland is growing from this time over the last couple of years, steadily, with a good margin. The last year, we have the EUR 50 million . We started from 18, so the business was almost triple during this couple of years. We have good margin, slightly below the group expectations, slightly below the double digit. But Poland has very good market position. We are one of the biggest player of the market, on the connectivity market of the FTTH and copper. And there is the very wide range of services.
We maintain a lot of net-copper network, we do the installation of the copper, we maintain the FTTH, we do a lot of customer installations, we do the FTTH deployment, and we entered two years ago in the mobile market, and this mobile market is growing quite well. Last year, 100% revenue growth. And last year, we entered as well EVC. So Poland has quite good perspective. There is quite a big organization behind these numbers. We have 1,200 employees, almost 2,000 in total of the subcontractors. But there is the exchange rate, which is not presenting the size of Poland well enough. In the future, for the next two years, we would like to extend our market share.
We are working in the entire Poland, so we have the full country coverage already. And we would like to enter much more in the energy sector, like the power grid, extend EVC, enter the big PV, the market is growing as well, and we would like to start some activities on the IT. We are doing right now the trial with one of the biggest IT players in Europe. U.K., completely different markets. We started with very negative EBITDA two years ago, and the business model was not adjusted. The business was focused only on the mobile sites and the full process, the full mobile site construction. So we changed it significantly over the last two years. We entered FTTH deployment, much, much better margins.
Last year, we decided to start significant restructuring, which was eventually finished with the termination of some contracts. Right now, our revenue are decreasing, maybe not significantly, but there is some decrease due to the termination of this contract, but our EBITDA is growing up. We started EVC business. We signed significant contract with the Connected Kerb. It was announced, I think, two years, two days ago. We believe that we are able to improve the revenue and profitability of the U.K. We changed as well the CEO last this year this year. The new person is very well experienced in the energy market, and we already started some contracting on the energy market.
So we believe that the power grid, it is something when we, we are able to benefit from on the U.K. market. We have the certification up to thirty-three kilovolt, and we are waiting for the certification up to one hundred thirty-five. So, we believe that this is this will be the growing market in the next years. To other countries, much more difficult. In Spain, the coverage of the fiber is one of the biggest in Europe. So there is no possibility to grow on the FTTH market anymore, both on the customer connections and, as well on the FTTH deployment. So, we have certain challenges, and it is, we started the structurization of the beginning of 2023, but it was the process like the chasing the rabbit.
So we improved the results, but the volume decreased. We improved the results again, the volume increased again, and so eventually we decided to go out from the connectivity market, almost. We are in the middle of the big restructuring. We have over there the business with EVC and IT, which is with the very good margins, so in Spain we are going to focus much more on the energy market and the IT market in the future, but we are in the process in the restructuring still, and so therefore in the next quarters we need to make the decision what to do with this connectivity part of the business in Spain. We don't want to have the business which is not profitable.
We have certain expectations, so we started much more push to terminate the negative parts of the business, be much more selective with our contracting. Italy, quite similar case. We had the 2023 issue with one of the contracts for FTTH deployment, and we started a significant restructuring, which is almost finished. Yesterday, we received the good information about almost final approval of this process. So the revenue decreased in 2024, but we believe that we are able to increase the revenue again in 2025, even on the connectivity market. As you remember, at the beginning, I presented that one of the results of these processes we implemented was the renegotiation of the contract with one of the customers.
Therefore, we believe that we can have much better margins. Italy as well, energy market and IT will be our, our main growing part. But still, this is the same question like Spain. If we are not able to bring the positive margins, we will decide to divest, to terminate the part of our business. Energy is growing, good margins. IT as well, but so the connectivity in Italy is situation much more difficult. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Wojtek. Thank you. Q&A session. Do we have any questions here from the people who are in this room? Everything clear? We kept you awake. Not sure.
We can start with a question from the podcast. It's about Germany, and particularly HR in Germany. So if you're expecting a very strong growth and ramp-up in Germany, how do you make sure you'll be able to recruit sufficient number of technicians? And how will you cope with the possible salary inflation?
Okay, so question on Germany, how we are capable to find enough technicians and make sure that we handle the salary inflation?
So, there's multiple strategies that we're deploying in Germany to find the right people. The first one is local procurement, but in Germany, unemployment rates are very low. So local procurement is not easy in Germany, and finding good project managers, Bauleiters in the fiber space is difficult. We are also to find technicians. We have a relationship with a company in Bosnia who are recruiting in the Balkan area for us. There is in Germany something that is called the Westbalkanregelung, which means that for bottleneck professions, you can easily obtain a visa for Germany if you have basic German language skills and the right diplomas. So we have, I think, half of our technician base comes from Bosnia, Herzegovina, Serbia, and those countries. And it's something that we will continue doing.
We provide housing for them for a while. They pay for the housing, but, you know, we ensure that they can find proper housing. You know, so that's a second part of the strategy. The third part of the strategy is what I call our MySupply strategy. MySupply is our compliance tool. We'll talk about that later, distributor compliance tool. But in MySupply, when distributors are in MySupply, we can also ask for, I call it distributor subcontractors, are in MySupply, we can easily ask: "Would you have technicians available to do this or that or that job?" So that's how we find new technicians out of the market as well.
We have a person that is responsible for that MySupply finding of technicians, finding of subcontractors, and that database, you know, is growing steadily, not only in the telecom space, but also in the energy space. One of the things that those Stadtwerke in Germany do is publish the certified subcontractors for the Stadtwerke, so it's easy place for the MySupply team to start hunting new subcontractors. So three strategies.
Thank you, Luc. Very clear. Questions from the room or from remote? Yeah, Emmanuel.
Thank you. Emmanuel Matot from Oddo BHF, sorry. You have been very successful in Benelux. I just wanted to know if you are excited or not by this memorandum of understanding signed between the telcos in Belgium to invest in the fiber network. Is that positive or negative for Solutions 30 over the mid and long term? And second question, you are not guiding for sales in 2026. I understand there are still some issues in Spain, in Italy. I think this is part of the explanation. But overall, to achieve more than 10% EBITDA margin, do you need top-line growth compared to the EUR 1 billion of sales you are currently doing?
Okay, so two good questions, different questions. The first one is Benelux. I will let maybe Luc and Ton elaborate, but I can answer the first part of the question.
It's a must, this agreement among operators. You know, building a national network of telecommunications is a hell of a lot of money.
... and in all of the countries, at a certain point in time, in this market that is regulated, there is an agreement. So usually, what I've seen is that in the areas that are very dense, basically, you are free to do what you want. You know, it happened in France, zone très dense, you know, everybody can build. And then in the second layer, which is the areas that are average dense, there is some kind of agreement among operators. So basically, they swap infrastructure, and that makes it more interesting to invest there. And then there is the rural areas, where usually nobody wants to go, and then there is some public money that is injected to get it going. Benelux will get to that somehow.
What's really important is not so much the details of the deal, that a deal is made. Because when this deal is up in the air, basically everybody stops and wait for, you know, the rules of the game being published. The good thing is that these rules will be known by end of the year, when it's done.
Yeah.
Yeah, it is.
More or less.
Yeah, more or less end of the year. So, you know, next year, things should flow as, you know, normal. Anything you want to add, Ton, on-
Maybe-
Look.
Maybe a quick one. So it's not Benelux, it's Belgium, and there's one part of Belgium and north of Belgium. We operate for all the parties that are in that discussion. So we operate for Proximus, for Fiberklaar, and for Telenet. On the rural part, we actually see a big advantage. On the rural part, so the less dense 20%, the decision is made to use coax, not copper. So we'll see Proximus customers moving to the coax network as well, which we've got kind of an exclusive arrangement for with Telenet.
I think, you know, in the end it will be positive, but as Gianbeppi said, you know, it puts a bit of a break because no new zones are awarded at the moment until it is decided who deploys which zone. There's still overbuild happening in cities, right? So that is continuing. But on the, you know, mid-density zones, there's a temporary break. Yeah.
Okay. Anything else to...
No, we're fine.
Okay. Okay, second question. Why you're not guiding on revenues, and do you need revenues to have double-digit EBITDA?
You remember that for a very long time, we spoke only about revenues. The rationale being that you need to have a certain size and a geography to be profitable. That is still valid. So when we are in a country, we want to be a significant player or we prefer to be out. It's the situation we are facing in the small countries, where Wojtek said, "You know, next year we're going to decide if we stay or not." You know, no point to stay in a geography next year if we see that this bottom line negative. We don't want that. So that is one pair of shoes. So midterm, we still want to be, you know, important in each geography.
But there is a time for everything. Now, you have seen that during this Capital Market Day, we spoke a lot about margins and cash. Because the idea of being dense and being large enough in a geography is good long term, but in the midterm, you have all these little things that can go wrong, that Wojtek spoke about, and it's now the right time to clean up those things.
Mm-hmm.
So basically, you know, we are spending one or two years to clean this up, make sure that we have the right KPIs in place, the right processes. With that, only with that, without growth in the current situation, we are capable to be double-digit. That's actually what we are suggesting, and we are saying we see it later in multi-day, but three main geographies, Benelux, France, Germany, double-digit by 2026 latest. And then all the rest, we will manage, you know, accordingly to our capability to be profitable or not. We think that at this time, that's the most important message we can convey to our investors. Okay? So our company is going to be double-digit by 2026. That's what we are saying. And then long-term, we believe that we are in markets where, you know, the potential is huge.
So longer term, we believe we will grow, you know, like we did in the past and be a significant player in certain geographies. But that will come in a second step. Focus now, margins and cash. Other questions?
We've got another question from the webcast on France. How big is the copper exit opportunity? What sort of revenue could it represent for you, and could it stabilize the role of your connectivity business?
Amaury?
Yeah. Good, good question, as well. Well, as I said, it's a, it's a significant opportunity. You know, this represent significant additional volumes, you know, amounting to EUR 1 billion per year. So it's very significant. Already, the good thing is that Solutions 30 is already positioned on the pilot. So we are currently doing this activity in the south of France, and we are currently managing more volume than we expected, you know, a few months ago. So it's starting. Now, Orange took strong commitments to terminate the connection to copper network, so it's starting. So it's hard to give you a precise estimate, but just I will share some insights so that you can have an idea of the potential for Solutions 30.
Currently, we are ten companies operating in the copper network for the maintenance activity and we have a strong competitive advantage since we already perform this activity for Orange in Poland. So we know, you know, what needs to be done. We are currently doing that in the pilot phase, so we are shooting for a large market share on this activity.
Thank you, Amaury. Any other questions?
I'll carry on with the question from the web. We've got two questions on Germany. The first one is on working capital. You mentioned that the working capital dynamics were good in Germany. Could you elaborate a bit on that, and is it sustainable?
Yeah.
And the second one, in your revenue target between EUR 150 billion and EUR 200 billion, what's the split between energy and connectivity?
That's you, Luc.
Yeah. Working capital, first thing. First thing we've done is sanitize some of the businesses that were not as profitable. We've renegotiated contracts with existing customers, had significant price adjustments, negotiated salary indexations adjustments for the future. So we've changed existing contracts, which led to better margins, and that was the first thing we did. The second thing we're actually doing now is to ensure that we create savings and synergies between the companies we have in Germany, right? So that drives another EBITDA plus. On the new contracts that we've negotiated, we've negotiated much longer than I thought we would negotiate, and, you know, I'd hoped to be much further in the fiber deployment business.
But we've negotiated those contracts well, because what we've asked for from our customers is to ensure that we can stay cash positive as we ramp up the programs, so we get prepayments for each contract in Germany that we start deploying. And that gives us, you know, a cash advance and a continuous cash positive rollout. So we don't see the dips every time we start up a new project. So that's kinda, you know, the three things that we did. On the mix, at the moment, or just until now, recently, our focus has been very much on the fiber deployment side and the Home Connect side. We've got contracts with some of the parties that I mentioned that are just for Home Connect and vertical cabling.
50% of Germans live in apartment buildings, so that apartment building vertical cable is very important in Germany. So a lot of focus has been that. We have recently hired a business developer on the energy space. We've done the Xperal acquisition, which was important. And we're looking at, you know, of that EUR 150-200 million, to have by 2026, about EUR 25-30 million in the energy space and then growing from there.
Thank you, Luc. So now we continue, right? Thank you.
Good morning, everybody. I will start off this last part of our session by looking into how Solutions 30 is monitoring its profitability KPIs. First, let's have a look at the adjusted EBITDA as this is the polestar of Solutions 30. For the company, this is the most accurate reflection of business performance at contract and activity level. It is used to steer internally and drive performance improvements of our acquired companies. Secondly, we use it for our internal reporting as well as for our external communication. Like mentioned today by Wojtek, we are very much focusing on improving our margins, improving our EBITDA margin. If you look at the box to the right of the slide, you will see that when we improve our adjusted EBITDA, we are actually also improving our adjusted EBIT.
There is almost a one-on-one correlation between the adjusted EBITDA and the adjusted EBIT. We can identify two main cost lines between the adjusted EBITDA and the adjusted EBIT. For starters, we have the IFRS 16 lease depreciations, which consists of the fleet of vehicles and of the rent of buildings. And the group, Solutions 30, is trying to use its leverage, to be a group, to drive down these costs across all countries by negotiating good terms. Next, we have the other operational depreciations. These depreciations are mainly consisting of, workforce equipment and our T platform, which is the backbone of our, of our company. If you go below the adjusted EBIT, we see several cost lines that not always are reflecting, the operational performance of the company.
But nevertheless, we will look into these lines, and we are trying to optimize these costs. The first one is the amortization of intangibles. As already communicated several times, this amortization of customer relationships of acquired companies do not have a cash impact and nor do they have an operational reality. Further down, we go into the non-recurring items. These items are coming from events that are outside our normal course of business, for instance, restructuring costs, which we are trying to avoid where possible. The next line, the financial result, we have seen rising lately. Due to increased interest rates, we are seeing it rising. Solutions 30 is trying to lower these costs or counter these increased expenses by decreasing its gross debt.
Finally, we are incurring our corporate taxes to come to the net income. On the bottom of the slide, you will see a reference to the restated net income, which is an adjustment on our net income by reducing the post-acquisition tax impact of our amortizations of intangibles. Let's now have a look at our financing policy at Solutions 30. We have three core principles which have been existing for many years, and those are the following: First, we are reinvesting our earnings. We are reinvesting our earnings by not paying dividends, but in investing it in our growth to fund our growth efficiently. Next, we are using bank debt financing to finance our external growth.
And our solid financial position is making sure that our that the rights of our shareholders are being preserved by not having to raise capital or increase our capital. Let's now take a look how Solutions 30 is financing its operations. In the start of a project, we are seeing that we are having high costs with low volumes or no income, so we need to finance these needs. How do we do this? We have a certain toolbox at our possession, which we can use. First, we have the advance payments. We are asking our clients to give us advance payments to cover some of these prepaid expenses. Next, we have...
We are taking our own earnings and investing them into new projects, making sure that we are able to grow. We are externally financing our capital expenditures and our M&A. Finally, we have a deconsolidating factoring program in place to reduce the time between the invoice that we have sent and the cash on our bank account. On the left box, you will see a lot of examples of financing needs we have in the launch phase. The bottom part of this box, the WIP, is one of the most important ones. It is actually the lead time between when you are performing the work, when you have performed the work, and you have sent the first invoice. Because once we have sent an invoice, we can factor it due to the factoring program, but the lead time in between is also very important.
Maybe let's take a deeper look to the WIP. The WIP in this particular project, this is the deployment project, a fiber deployment project which we have selected. The average time between the start of the project and the first invoice sent is around 130 days. What's happening in these 130 days is we are training, hiring, equipping our technicians, we are staffing our back office, and we are starting the first works in the field. We are designing, doing the designs, we are having the first diggings, and so on. What actions do we do to reduce this WIP after the first year, huh? Like mentioned also by Wojtek earlier today, we have tried to automate a lot of processes of trying to reduce the invoice approval cycle.
For instance, we are using an artificial intelligence and our iPads to measure the depth and the width of a trench. This, together with our investments in our IT tool, SmartFix, which creates interfaces between our clients and ourselves, we are trying to reduce our WIP after the first year by 70%. Solutions 30 has a set of key drivers that they are monitoring on a daily basis to optimize their cash position. First, we are negotiating. For instance, we are negotiating customer and supplier contracts. We are pushing a back-to-back model towards our subcontractors. We are incentivizing our employees to have a focus on cash mentality, and we are constantly controlling and monitoring our WIP position.
Solutions 30 has a method, a proven method on trying to learn how to cross the companies, to learn how to manage these drivers. We identify a key driver, we train all employees of a certain company, all key employees, we copy this training, and we roll it out across all countries. And further, we are developing monitoring dashboards to follow closely, day by day, how this key driver is evolving. In the end, we are monitoring the cash flow on a client basis to see what the effect is of these measurements. As already mentioned, Solutions 30 is able to finance its inorganic and organic growth without having to raise extra capital. How are we doing this?
By strictly controlling our working capital requirements, by, for instance, negotiations with clients and suppliers, but also our deconsolidating factoring program. Next to that, we have low capital expenditure requirements of 1-2% on yearly revenue. Together, this brings that we have a low cash requirement to fund our growth. Solutions 30 is also investing money in bolt-on acquisitions, but even by doing these investments in these acquisitions, we are able to remain to have a leverage ratio, historically, a net debt over adjusted EBITDA, historically below 2 times. Finally, I would like to present you a standard life cycle of a fiber project.
The first phase, the launch phase, which remains existing for six to twelve months, you will see that, this is the phase where we have the highest working capital pressure, like mentioned before. In the beginning of the growth phase, we are implementing these processes. We are putting in place a consolidated factory program to reduce the pressure on our working capital. This is also the phase where we reach our critical size, due to the increasing volumes, and we are able to drive down our travel time and drive down and optimize the planning of our technicians. The latter phase, the maturity phase, that's where we see a long-shaped, bell curve-shaped phase, where we have nice volumes and where we are training technicians.
The technicians have been fully trained, and our productiveness is at its maximum. Most of the time, in a normal life cycle, you will see after a certain period that when the maturity is reached, that you will have a declining phase where the volumes will go down, and also your productiveness will go down. Fortunately, Solutions 30 is able to also offer maintenance and repair activities that are generating a recurring stream of revenues for the group. I will now hand over to Amaury.
Thank you, Jonathan. So a word on the M&A. As you know, M&A is a key component of our strategy. We have started to make acquisitions in 2009, and since then, we have closed thirty, more than thirty deals. We have always been able to buy these companies at very favorable conditions, and the last acquisition that we announced two days ago shows and proves that we are still able to buy at very favorable conditions. And in total, the revenue that we acquired through these deals amounts to EUR 350 million in total. So through this M&A strategy, our objective is always to accelerate, you know, the implementation of our strategy.
In some cases, we make M&A deals that enable us to gain access to strategic markets or to strategic customers. This was the case of the acquisition of Sirtel, which allowed us to enter the Polish mobile telecom market. It was the case of Gaertner in Germany, that helped us to enlarge our customer database on the fiber market. And it was the case of Brabamij in order to accelerate our transition on the energy segment. In other cases, we are looking as an opportunity to extend our coverage and extend our activities in some regions.
This was notably the case of ELEC ENR, the company that we acquired in the north of France, and allowed us to increase these activities related to renewable energies in the north of France. This was also the case with Mono Consultants, which enabled us to extend our presence in southern England. In other situations, what we look for is to increase our density, because when we have a good density, then we are able to manage larger volumes. When we are in such situations, we can offer better response time and better pricing conditions to our customers. In all these M&A deals, you know, each time we consider an M&A deal, we are always looking if there is a room for improving the profitability of the target company.
Based on this experience, we have developed a proven methodology, you know, to sustain this M&A strategy. First of all, we are continuously screening the market. You know, we know our strategic markets, and in our strategic markets, we are always looking at, you know, potential targets. Then when we think that, you know, some of these targets could be interesting for Solutions 30, we execute our due diligence processes, which deliver good results. So in these due diligence processes, we assess the potential and risks across different dimensions: finance, compliance, we look at the customer portfolio, we look at the processes, we look at, you know, ESG compliance with ESG regulations. And then we make an overall assessment.
During this phase is very important because when we have a good assessment as from the very beginning, then we can start as from day one, the integration of the company, which allows then, a quick integration. Let me share with you some examples illustrating this M&A strategy. The first example is in Poland. It's not exactly an M&A deal. It's rather an outsourcing deal that we concluded with Orange in two thousand and twenty-two. At the end of two thousand and twenty-two, Orange decided to outsource part of its operations in the area of Warsaw. Solutions 30 was selected to take over this business, so we insourced more than 340 employees in the group.
This, in exchange of this, of this deal, we managed to to improve our relationship with Orange in, in Poland. We got an additional contract for five years, and we also received additional volumes on the very, you know, promising activity that I mentioned earlier, the copper decommissioning. As you can see on the graph on the right-hand side, the team did a great job, and we managed to successfully integrate this part of business, since the EBITDA margin significantly improved as from the very beginning. Other example, ELEC ENR, a company that we acquired one year ago in France, specialized in the renewable energies. So during the due diligence phase, we identified a number of assets.
You know, this company has a very well-established reputation in this field. Customers were very happy with the quality delivered. The team was extremely motivated and had very strong capabilities. But we also identified a number of weaknesses, you know, which are just related to the size of this company, which has a very local coverage, you know, managed as a small company. You know, high cost of support functions, no incentive policy for, you know, to foster productivity of the technicians. There was no financial management, which could be a problem to gain additional contracts. So we identified these weaknesses as potential leverages for us.
And so we addressed these weaknesses during the integration phase and, you know, it proved to be a very successful deal and integration since just one year after. We won several reference contracts. You know, we mentioned earlier this floating solar farm, you know, the largest one in Europe, that we have installed in this region, especially. We have been able to double the revenue of this company. We have been able to reach the profitability standards in one year, so it has been a good integration. And the other good thing is that in this region, now, this region represents 50% of the sales pipe that we have in the solar business in France.
Definitely, it was a good deal for Solutions 30. Looking forward, M&A will continue to be a key aspect of our strategy. We'll continue to make acquisitions. Obviously, we will focus on our strategic markets and especially the energy market in France and Benelux. But we will also have a focus on the connectivity, the opportunities on the connectivity segment, on the very promising markets of Germany and U.K. In all this situation, we will also focus on, you know, the acquisitions with a long-term potential. So, target companies that can bring maintenance activities generating recurring revenue, or we'll look at opportunities to consolidate our market share to develop a long-term relationship with strategic customers.
Our market is still very fragmented, okay? And we are still competing against a large number of small companies. So what we see for the next coming years is to continue this bolt-on strategy, where we will acquire medium-sized companies, which is a good thing, because what we have proven over the last years is that with this bolt-on, when we make this kind of deal, we are able to to integrate quickly. There is no risk in terms of integration, and we manage to get a quick return on investment on these acquisitions. The other benefit of this strategy is that over the last years, we have been able to keep a good balance sheet structure.
You know, Jonathan was mentioning a net debt to EBITDA ratio below 2%, and we do not plan to exceed this threshold in the coming years. I will now leave the floor to Nathalie to speak about the ESG topics. Thank you, Nathalie.
Hello, good morning, everyone. My name is Nathalie Duchêne. I am the Group Head of Risk, Compliance and ESG. After finance, M&A, let's talk about ESG. In fact, both topics are really highly connected. For the third year, early next year, we are going to publish our annual report, integrated annual report, including financial and non-financial items. And one item which reflects, I think, the best the link between financial and non-financial items is taxonomy. We will talk about that later on. But I would like to start my presentation with our bold ESG achievement, which allow us to meet six sustainable development goals of United Nations. I will comment two of them only, because I think you know them. Training, I think you understood during the presentations that training is key to us. We train, train, and train.
This is really important. In 2023, we delivered almost 28 hours per employee of training. This is really important when you know that the average on the market is about 16 hours. On the right side, you see that we are working on the circular economy. This is really important. In 2023, we repaired more or less 140,000 printers and 80 computers. So this is really... This is the opposite, sorry. 140 computers and 80,000 printers. All these achievements are based on our strategy. Strategy based on three pillars: environment, with the reduction of CO₂ emission as a key priority. Then social, we insist on training to maintain a high level of training.
We focus on the injury severity rate, which is the ratio between the lost days and the worked hours. Then on governance, we have several topics: the TPDD process, which is key, third-party due diligence process. We have two business codes of conduct. We focus on cybersecurity, and as already mentioned earlier today, we just got a new certificate in relation to cybersecurity. I forgot to show you here. This is quite important. This strategy comes from our double materiality matrix, of course, but we have no time to talk about that. But if you have questions, don't hesitate. I will answer them. Of course, to implement our strategy, we have defined KPIs.
We are measuring the evolution of our CO₂ emissions compared to the evolution of our revenue. Thus, this is an intensity target. For the social, we want to have 0.65 in injury severity rate. Training hours, 25 hours, it's really important. In 2023, we had almost 28 because we hired a lot of people, and that means we had to deliver a lot of training. It will be the case still in 2024, but not to this extent. We want to maintain a certain level of women in management position, at least 25%. And for governance, we want to have 95% of our subcontractors registered on our database called MySupply. For CO₂ emissions, you see that from 2022 to 2024, we have reduced our emissions thanks to different measures.
I have listed here four of them. The first one, this is the optimization of the trips of our technicians. Wojciech talked already about that. We have dedicated tools to do that, our Praxedo, for example. We work on the polyvalence of our technicians, so that means that we don't want them to work in a different area, but we want them to work on several activities in the same area to reduce the trips and reduce exactly not at the same level our emissions. We have a mandatory eco-driving training. And last but not least, of course, we are introducing step-by-step hybrid and electric cars in our fleet. At the beginning of this year, we committed to SBTi, so this is a really big step for us.
We are in the process of defining our absolute targets to reduce our CO₂ emissions, talking about scope one, two, and three. To do that, we have set up a dedicated team. It's worth highlighting that two members of the management board are part of this dedicated project. For this project, we are working with an external company called EcoAct, a company from Schneider Electric. A slide on taxonomy. So three of our activities have been categorized as green activities, let's say, and they can be taken into account in the EU environmental taxonomy. This is the installation, maintenance, and repair of EV chargers, smart meters, and photovoltaic panels.
As you see, and if, as you understood during the other presentation, our activities in energy are going to grow, so our taxonomy is going to improve accordingly. 8% is quite good, but it's going to increase in the near future. One slide on social. So training, I think you understood, training, training, training, it's really important. And you see here, it's quite important who received the training. We see that most of the training was delivered to the technicians. On the safety, so we work on the injury severity rate, really important to maintain a certain level here. And then gender equality. At the end of last year, we have set up a new association with women within the group.
Within this association, we have a mentoring program, and for the time being, we have 17 mentor-mentees projects ongoing. And among our mentors, we have prestigious mentors coming from the supervisory board, from the management board, and from the executive committee. The last point is on rating agencies. So as you see, we have good result, satisfactory result, but of course this is a continuous improvement cycle, so we work all the time on improving this result. We have a dedicated team following closely the rating agencies. Every year they change the methodology, so we have to know that. We have to be aware of the change and to be able to adapt quickly.
We also work on the details we give to them. We have to improve that part, and the preparation of our next ESG report, according to CSRD, is going to help us because we are going to give much more information. We are going to publish much more information, and this should improve our rating. Last but not least, really important to say that the maintenance or improvement of this score is part of the bonus of the managers, so the last part, governance, is going to be dealt with by Katarzyna. Thank you.
Hello, everybody. My name is Katarzyna Kuszewska. I'm heading the legal department at Solutions 30. Today, I would like to present you with the sort of update on our transformation, GRC, governance, risk, and compliance project that we have initiated back in two thousand twenty-one. So very briefly, what happened between the years two thousand twenty-one and two thousand twenty-two? What is the objective of GRC of the transformation project? The objective was very clear from the start. We wanted to ensure the continuous improvement of our existing compliance and governance framework. We focused on our existing policies and procedures. We reviewed everything in detail. We identified areas of improvement and ensured the implementation of best-in-class practices. We identified several work streams to focus on.
We looked into standardization of the third-party due diligence process, which is essential, as you heard today. We wanted to ensure uniformization of risk management and risk mitigation procedures, as well as internal controls. We reviewed our code of conduct. We improved our existing whistleblowing process, as well as we implemented the whistleblower platform. We ensured it was a mandatory requirement, very important for us, that all employees are well-trained on GRC, so the mandatory training was organized. As well, we identified the disciplinary actions, catalogs, and practices. Obviously, monitoring is also very important in these kind of projects, so we focus very much on ensuring that subsidiaries are following, that subsidiaries are invested, involved, and committed to respecting these procedures. Here, a little bit of an update of the recent years.
As I said, involvement of the supervisors of the subsidiaries was essential. We wanted to make sure the awareness is high. We created. We had a lot of sessions. We had training that I mentioned. We implemented and kicked off the third-party due diligence process with a dedicated team that manages every day verification of our, not only subcontractors, but all business partners. We designated and enhanced as well the compliance department. We hired a head of compliance and risk. We build up a bigger organization, compliance organization across the group. We created for our employees a GRC knowledge center, where they can look and review all of the policies and procedures across that we have implemented.
Very important, we ensured that our whistleblowing platform is up to the highest standards, is in line with the EU Whistleblowing Directive. Of course, last but not least, we launched a number of compliance verification controls across the group. Something Nathalie already mentioned, a part of the management board's annual objectives is also focused not only on revenue, but also ESG and GRC. For instance, last year we have focused on GRC training rate, and this year we are focusing on implementation of internal control, so additional motivation for our managers to focus on these topics. We continue to monitor the policies and procedures and its implementation, and let me show you the last slide focusing on the GRC deliverables.
Here you have, in a nutshell, a sort of a quick summary of all the work streams that we worked on. You see the third-party due diligence that we have already talked about. Very important, we. I think last year we verified almost three thousand business partners and subcontractors. We verified every immaterial red flags, which turned out to be approved at the end. We had whistleblowing platform. This year, we had so far five whistleblowing cases. In comparison to last year, it was four. The process has been applied. They have been investigated. There was nothing material at the end, but it proved that our whistleblowing process works, and that's the most important, and it proves effective. Training, training, training.
As you hear today, it's very essential for us, so we focused on that very much. Code of conduct, we share with our business partners our code of conduct. It's very important for us that they share the same values as we do. Also, internal control, constant verification of subsidiaries on-site and every day in daily work. On top of that, we have introduced another layer of controls. We set up an internal audit department. What else? Verification, respect of these procedures, and constant communication with the countries is the key to ensure the proper implementation.
In conclusion, you know, for us, it's very important to continue to improve these practices, to continue to improve our governance and compliance, not only to foster trust and the accountability within our organization, but to ensure that our shareholders, our clients, our partners, and key stakeholders are satisfied with our everyday performance. So, yeah. Now, just to give you a little example, since throughout all the procedures, all the lectures today, we talked about the training a lot. Please take a look at one of the videos on training.
As Ton Bosters mentioned before, we were talking about the training space at one of our subsidiaries in Belgium, which is very well-organized and shows very effective for our technicians. Just to give you an update, we also have a training university that we do online training across the group. Yes, so all it takes, please take a look at the video that is coming soon.
... Gianbeppi, the floor is yours.
Thank you. Thank you, Katarzyna. Thank you, all. Last two slides. We are almost done. So this is the recap of what we said before with Emmanuel. Basically, what we are telling you is that we are going to have, latest in twenty-six, all of the three main geographies of the group above 10% EBITDA margin, so double-digit margin. That will be the vast majority of our revenues. There will be the rest, which is the small countries, and the size of the rest will depend on what we will decide to do in some of the small geographies. But in any case, either we will be positive or we will be out. Focus will continue on cash generation and margins, of course, and we will continue also doing M&As as we did in the past, not expensive deals, small bolt-on.
Of course, we'll keep an eye on the sustainability. On the revenue side, the important things are France, where the energy activity will triple the size in two years, and Germany, again, that will triple the size in two years. Longer term, we believe that we can double the size of the group overall without any dilution for the shareholders and being double digit. That will happen with technology, that we continue to grow, in particular thanks to Germany, and energy growing faster than technology. That's the longer term objective. We are done with the presentation, and we are happy to take the last questions. Questions from the room or from remote, Thomas?
We've got question from the webcast. One is on Benelux. In your indication of revenue growing in 2025 and margin being over 10% in two years, what assumption have you taken regarding the current situation with the negotiations between operators? And question is here, is there some upside in case this situation is resolved?
Okay, so basically, what happens between now and twenty-six, and have we been very cautious or average cautious? I think that's the question, right, Thomas? Okay.
I think we're being average cautious, taking into-
Wait, wait, wait. Take the mic. Yeah, wait for the mic. Yeah. Thank you.
I think we're average cautious and taking into account that these projects and time is taking time, so we have accepted the fact that this could have a delay in our growth, but the growth will be there. We're strong for all our customers in the region, so whatever this issue will be, we will take a part of the works. I think we have the good numbers in our forecast to make this happen.
Okay, so basically what you're saying is we have been quite cautious on the short term.
Yeah.
Bottom line is that we are talking about the delay related to regulation, but the outlook for the region for the midterm remains very strong.
Yeah, indeed. And the most difficult one to currently really think about what is the impact on the finances is the Home Connect part. Because we see that that part is really not really picking up in a high, in a very high volume. If we took that into account, the forecast could have been even bigger and higher.
Okay, so just a matter of time to make sure that things will develop as, you know, everybody expects.
Indeed.
Thank you. Other questions from the room?
We’ve got more from the webcast. We got a few questions on the finance part. How to think about leverage and M&A budget in a context where you seem to be ready to do more bolt-on M&A, and you have the ambition of doubling your size. So what would be the hurdle rates in terms of leverage?
When you look at the history of the company, we've done thirty M&A deals. Leverage has been maximum two times, so net debt over EBITDA. We like net debt because then our financing costs are not too high. So we like to keep it like that, and we can do it because as Amaury has explained, we are buying company three to six times EBITDA. Sometimes we do not declare how much we pay on an M&A because we buy companies from individuals that don't want to see this information all over the net, and we have to respect it. We always made deals at a very reasonable price. And by the way, the last two deals, Xperal and also Gaertner in Germany, were really on the low side in terms of price.
So we will keep. We like, we like to have a low leverage ratio. Anything else?
I'll continue with the question from the web then. When could we expect net income to turn positive?
Well, you've seen with Jonathan that we are not very far. So, very soon, I would say, that's I think the best I can say. Very soon, very soon. If you take away the amortization of intangibles that is not related to any reality, you've seen that in the first half, we were at minus one, so not positive yet, but very close. So we'll turn positive very soon. Emmanuel.
In a negative scenario, you would decide to exit the rest of Europe. Would you look at for a deal, an M&A deal, to divest, to sell it, or it's not possible? And if it's not possible, what would be the cost-
Mm-hmm.
-for Solutions 30 to stop?
Okay. Well, first of all, the rest is four countries. In Poland, we are very strong, so we don't see ourselves going out of Poland. And then the other three geographies is very unlikely that we go out of the three, you know. So the impact is going to be limited, and of course, you know, the first option would be to sell. There is buyers, so it's a fragmented market. So we are not expecting a big problem related to the fact that we exit the geography. You know, first of all, we are not talking about something big, and secondly, there is a market where there is buyers and sellers, so it should be no problem. We don't anticipate big problems.
Another one from the webcast. Why are you not providing a guidance for the whole group for 2026?
Sorry, say it again.
Why are you not providing guidance for the whole group instead of country level?
The idea is to be very open with all of you. So we are telling you what we are sure we will do by 2026, focusing on important things. So, you know, we want to commit to certain things that we are sure we can deliver in 2026, and then to give you a guidance for the future. I think it's the best we can do with a transparent communication.
Okay, then we've got questions on the, on margins. Is or are margins in energy higher than in connectivity in general?
Yes, indeed, it is. Actually, I was talking about that with some people before. It's what we are seeing. What we are seeing is that in the energy market, utilities are more conscious of quality and security. It's an activity that is more complicated. You need skills that are more important than what you have in the telco market, and these clients are willing to pay for quality more than the telecommunication operators. So we are seeing, indeed, better margins in the energy space.
Mm-hmm. Carry on, then. There's a question about the size or the potential size of the power grid market in Europe.
That's huge. It's huge. Luc, you have some references in mind. I had hundreds of billions. It's really huge.
The European Union, as I presented in one of my slides, on the market programs, predicts EUR 2.3 trillion, so EUR 2,300 billion of investments going to that market until 2030. We, you know, not all of that market is addressable for us. So there's about EUR 800 billion that will be addressable for us. Today, it's a very fragmented market, so you have a lot of small companies working for those energy companies or grid operators. But with the growth that is being predicted, these small companies will not be able to scale like a Solutions 30 is.
So we believe that, you know, by applying our standard methodology of hiring people, training people, you know, we will be able to secure that growth that these companies need. So of that 800 billion, we think we deserve a right portion. Yeah.
Thank you, Luc.
On the market part, there is a question on EV charging market, which seems to be going slower than anticipated a few years ago. Could you give us an update on that?
Indeed.
Yes. Yes, I must say yes and no. In some countries, the EV market is still growing. In Belgium, you know, 73% of new cars that are leased are actually electric vehicles, so in Belgium, you see growth. In Germany, on the other hand, you know, there's been a downfall, a serious downfall in electric vehicles. You know, in the end, you know, I'm a person that truly believes, so I'm not sure whether I'm really objective, but you know, I think if... So transportation is about 20% of the CO2 that humanity produces.
If humanity wants to be carbon neutral by 2050, we'll have to go to other means of transportation, which is electric, and I assure you, it's a pleasant form of driving. I wouldn't know why people wouldn't go electric. Yeah, you know, I think in every new technology, you have the hype cycle, and I'm usually one of the early adopters, and then you'll have the adoption market. I think one of the reasons why the market is not growing as fast is, first of all, availability of electric vehicles as second-hand vehicles. I think 70% of every vehicle that is registered in Europe today is a second-hand car. You know, you're only looking at 30% of the market, and there's volatility in that 30%.
So I think, you know, over time, you know, that EV market will surely pick up. And you see vendors, you know, extending their their life cycle. On the other hand, you see vendors also, OEMs also investing a lot in new electrical vehicles. In France, particularly, you know, Renault has pushed a big, you know, has done a big push. Stellantis is following with a big push, so I think everybody will move in that space.
Anything else, Thomas?
Last one from the webcast. In a context where you're shifting your focus more onto the margins and cash generation rather than top line, have you or will you change your incentive policy within the group to reflect that?
It's already done. Now, in the incentive policy, there is really a clear focus on margin and cash generation and much less on revenue growth. Absolutely, it's already done. Okay, it's finished. Then let me just thank you all of you, the ones who were here physically present with us, the ones that are connected from remote, and I also take the opportunity to thank all of our investors, all of our employees, all our partners, the clients, of course, and all the stakeholders that believe in this company and allowed us to be here today. Thank you all. Have a good afternoon. Bye.